The inherent stochastic nature of wind power requires additional flexibility during power system operation. Traditionally, conventional generation is the only option to provide the required flexibility. However, the provision of the flexibility from the conventional generation such as coal-fired generating units comes at the cost of significantly additional fuel consumption and carbon emissions. Fortunately, with the development of the technologies, energy storage and customer demand response would be able to compete with the conventional generation in providing the flexibility. Give that power systems should deploy the most economic resources for provision of the required operational flexibility, this paper presents a detailed analysis of the economic characteristics of these key flexibility options. The concept of “balancing cost” is proposed to represent the cost of utilizing the flexible resources to integrate the variable wind power. The key indicators are proposed respectively for the different flexible resources to measure the balancing cost. Moreover, the optimization models are developed to evaluate the indicators to find out the balancing costs when utilizing different flexible resources. The results illustrate that exploiting the potential of flexibility from demand side management is the preferred option for integrating variable wind power when the penetration level is below 10%, preventing additional fuel consumption and carbon emissions. However, it may require 8% of the customer demand to be flexible and available. Moreover, although energy storage is currently relatively expensive, it is likely to prevail over conventional generation by 2025 to 2030, when the capital cost of energy storage is projected to drop to approximately $ 400/kWh or lower.