If, as a society, we are to reach this goal, we must develop a far more intelligent and flexible power system to meet a number of urgent challenges:

• Where will electricity come from when there is no wind? 
• How can we use electricity sensibly and economically in situations with so much wind that production exceeds consumption?
• How do we ensure that the power system with a 50% wind-power share is so dynamic and operationally flexible that it can react immediately to unforeseen events – for instance when wind turbines stall because of too much wind?

Some of the challenges related to a 50% wind-power share are elaborated below:

Power grid
The challenge here is to reinforce and expand the power grid so that power can be transmitted from new wind farms to where it is in demand in the interconnected international power market.

Power system
As electricity cannot be stored efficiently today, the power system must always balance between production and consumption. A 50% wind-power share markedly increases the need to handle shortages of capacity when there is no wind and oversupply when there are strong winds.

Power system balancing
Today, with a 20% wind-power share, shortage of capacity is not a problem as renewable energy has not yet displaced large power stations. Oversupply is a problem for nearly 100 hours a year. The problem is expected to become 3-5 times worse in a few years unless other means are introduced.

A 50% wind-power share in the power system – how?
Energinet.dk focuses on integrated planning of the energy systems within electricity, heat and transmission to enable the market to use wind power in a flexible manner. New types of electricity consumption (eg heat pumps, electric vehicles, etc.) must be organised in such a way that the consumption pattern can be adapted to the wind power production.

Extensive research and development is being conducted in means of handling the increasing amounts of wind power in the power system. Some of the means are: