At the renowned Florence School of Regulation in Florence, Italy, Mike Hogan addressed the topic of integrating variable renewable energy sources (RES) within the context of wholesale markets. Energy markets can effectively integrate higher quantities of variable renewable resources by recognizing the value of investing in the portfolio of system resources needed to achieve integration. Mr. Hogan provides examples of several measures for improving the way energy and ancillary services markets express the full value of real-time constraints in various resources. He illustrates how the market could drive investment in the most cost-effective options for providing system flexibility, on both the supply side and the demand side—options that today often have no opportunity to receive adequate compensation for the full value of the services they can provide. The fact that many of these options are treated differently in wholesale markets, or not allowed to participate at all, leads to erroneous conclusions about the ability to handle the variability of many renewables or to serious over-estimations of the cost to do so.On the utility side, the increase in distributed solar photovoltaics creates the challenge of steep ramping requirements in the late afternoon hours. Based on a real-life example from a commercial aggregator of demand response providing high-value ancillary services, Mr. Hogan illustrates the surprisingly varied and eminently practical suite of options available to manage the variability of many renewable resources in an affordable and reliable fashion. Where the variability challenge is becoming a reality, the value of resources well-suited to dealing with it will increase as well. There is a wide range of very low-cost, effective investment options available to provide those services, particularly in emerging customer demand management opportunities, if only the wholesale energy and services markets are allowed to cast the net wide enough.