Energy storage captures and stores energy for later use when needed. It helps balance electricity supply and demand, improve power quality by smoothing out fluctuations (spikes and sags), and lower electricity costs by postponing infrastructure investments during times of peak demand.
Pumped hydro storage and batteries are currently the two primary forms of energy storage available to us, though thermal and chemical processes also play an important role.
Energy Resilience
Energy resilience allows businesses to reduce their reliance on the electricity grid and protect themselves from costly outages, by becoming more energy efficient, adding renewables into its portfolio and developing a self-consumption plan (generating power from their own sources and using it as backup).
Businesses are becoming increasingly concerned with the effects of power outages on productivity, supply chain disruption and revenue loss. Many are investing in energy resilience solutions such as backup generators or microgrid systems in order to ensure business continuity during an outage. An energy assessment can determine your critical load size; alternatively energy storage devices could play a part in providing additional ancillary services like frequency regulation or voltage support to enhance its reliability further.
Grid Stability
Electric power grids must remain stable to provide steady electricity supplies, and be capable of responding swiftly when voltage or frequency levels change, such as when generators go offline or power lines are cut. Electrical grids have long relied upon massive rotating masses such as synchronous generators for this inertia; indeed this is still true today in countries like Norway where hydropower provides all their energy needs.
As variable renewables have increased, grid operators face new challenges in meeting consumer energy consumption needs and meeting production levels at the same time. Balancing power production with demand can be tricky since consumers rely on energy for lights and appliances at home and business alike; furthermore, solar production varies hour-to-hour; energy storage can help manage fluctuations by providing services such as voltage and frequency regulation.
Community Resilience
An increasing number of communities are adopting community resilience plans in order to assist their populations with adapting to climate change, urbanization and demographic shifts that increase risks from hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires or other natural disasters.
Access to social services and support networks helps at-risk people cope with stressors, build resilience and become resilient against disaster. Furthermore, providing financial aid for rebuilding lives post disaster strengthens community resilience.
Physical and financial resources are essential to community resilience; however, they should also be easily accessible. That is why resilient communities frequently combine disaster resilience plans with other valued local initiatives in areas like health, education and economic development. Factual knowledge bases, collective efficacy empowerment training education have been proposed as effective elements to increase community awareness in order to mitigate vulnerabilities caused by how communities view risks.
Electric Vehicles
Electric vehicles (EVs) provide not only transportation, but can also add significant value to the grid via vehicle-to-grid (V2G) approaches. V2G services may help meet peak demand, reduce transmission network access tariffs and defer capital expenditure for additional stationary energy storage6.
Electric vehicle (EV) batteries can make significant contributions to the grid both while they are in use and after their end-of-life (EoL). EoL occurs when an EV battery’s relative State of Health drops below 70%-80%7; however, second use service as stationary energy storage may still provide years of additional service8.
EV batteries can serve as short-term grid storage solutions, and their technical capacity quickly expands across all scenarios presented in Figure 5. Real world availability depends on participation rates in vehicle-to-grid and second use applications and will vary by country/region8. Estimates are made using a model framework that integrates data from an EV use model, degradation test datasets, and dynamic battery stock models. This approach provides a consistent perspective on future EV battery capacity across different application domains.