<p>The high penetration of renewable energy has brought new challenges to the power grid. One effective way to solve this problem is to improve flexibility by rationally planning flexible resources. The refining processes of the iron and steel industry consume large amounts of electricity and run in batch mode, which makes them flexible in regard to changing their power consumption rates. However, the flexibility of refining processes is unclear. Therefore, considering the heat dissipation of molten steel, a method for quantifying the provision of flexibility of refining processes is proposed in this work. The duration of interruption is used to evaluate the flexibility of refining processes and the effects of the initial temperature of molten steel are investigated. The results show that a higher initial temperature and/or larger mass of molten steel leads to a slower heat dissipation rate and smaller average temperature drop rate of molten steel, which is more conducive to providing the refining processes with flexibility. Furthermore, more flexibility will be provided under the following conditions: higher initial temperature of molten steel, smaller molten steel inventory, larger refined steel inventory, longer smelting cycle of converters, faster casting speed, and/or more ladle furnaces involved in load interruption.</p> Graphical Abstract <p></p>