Abstract
This paper reviews flexibility products and flexibility markets, currently being discussed or designed to help in the operation of power systems under their evolving environment. This evolution is characterized by the increase of renewable generation and distributed energy resources (including distributed generation, self-consumption, demand response and electric vehicles). The paper is an attempt to review and classify flexibility products considering its main attributes such as scope, purpose, location or provider, and to summarize some of the main approaches to flexibility markets designs and implementations. Main current literature gaps and most promising research lines for future work are also identified.

Abstract
This paper addresses the problem faced by an aggregator of small prosumers, when participating in the energy market. The aggregator exploits the flexibility of prosumers' appliances, in order to reduce its market net costs. Two optimization procedures are proposed. A two-stage stochastic optimization model to support the aggregator in the definition of demand and supply bids. The aim is to minimize the net cost of the aggregator buying and selling energy at day-ahead and real-time market stages. Scenario-based stochastic programing is used to deal with the uncertainty of electricity demand, end-users' behavior, outdoor temperature and renewable generation. The second optimization is a model predictive control method to set the operation of flexible loads in real-time. A case study of 1000 small prosumers from the Iberian market is used to compare four day-ahead bidding strategies and two real-time control strategies, as well as the performance of combined day-ahead and real-time strategies. The numerical results show that the proposed strategies allow the aggregator to reduce the net cost by 14% compared to a benchmark typically used by retailers (inflexible strategy).

Abstract
This work is within the scope of set of consultancy studies made for Portuguese islands. It focuses on the integration of Pumped Storage Power in isolated islands. The paper starts to address several power systems circumstances about two Portuguese islands on the energetic level. For each of these islands, an independent examination of the conditions to install a reversible hydro power plant is accomplished. Therefore, the energy volume to be stored due to excess of renewable generation and the ideal power and number of the pumps and turbines to be installed were identified and evaluated for the sake of using the produced energy surplus as to be pumped and later generated. The paper enhances the importance of storing energy in the operation of isolated and small systems with considerable amount of intermittent power resources as well as the conditions for the viability of installing new exploitations of this kind.

Abstract
The amount of distributed generation (DG) the network can host depends on a number of parameters such as the characteristics of the generation units and their daily generation profiles, the characteristics of the network and its configuration, the hourly load profiles as well as national and regional grid code requirements. The high penetration of renewable energy sources (RES) in the distribution networks (DN), namely in medium voltage (MV) grids, may lead to reverse active power flows, to voltage rises and to an increase in voltage distortion due to the large use of power-electronic converters as generation interfaces with the grid, which may limit the hosting capacity (HC) of RES. This paper is intended to describe a new approach for identifying the HC for the integration of RES in electrical distribution systems. This is a planning tool based on the multi-period optimal power flow (MP-OPF) which aims to maximize the HC for DG under thermal and voltage constraints, involving also the verification of the harmonic voltage distortion via a set of current harmonic flow calculations, following a known current harmonic injection profile for each DG unit to be connected on grid. The case study shows that harmonic distortion limits may have substantial impacts on the allowable penetration of DG, for instance, due of the characteristics of DN and its configuration, the hourly load and generation profiles.

Abstract

Abstract
In a consumer setting, storage systems can be dispatched in order to shift surplus generation to periods when a local generation deficit exists. However, the high investment cost still makes the deployment of storage unattractive. As a way to overcome this problem existing literature looking at storage installed at the grid-level suggests dispatching the storage device for multiple applications simultaneously in order to access several value streams. Therefore, in this work, a Mixed Integer Linear Program is developed in order to schedule the operation of a storage device in a consumer context for multiple objectives in parallel. Besides shifting locally generated energy in time, the peak demand seen by the electric grid is reduced and the storage device is operated to provide primary reserve control. The model is applied in a case study based on the current German situation in order to illustrate the value contribution of stacking multiple services. When pursuing multiple applications simultaneously, the revenues of storage can be increased significantly. However, the revenues are not additive due to conflicting operations which originates a revenue gap as illustrated in the paper.