Energy storage can “firm up” renewable resources, reduce electricity prices, increase grid reliability in an increasingly unpredictable climate, and provide community resiliency.
Electromagnetic storage includes equipment like capacitors and supercapacitors; flywheel short-term energy storage systems provide another form. Other methods may involve heating or cooling.
It Can Help Maximize the Use of Renewable Energy
Energy storage typically comes in the form of batteries (also referred to as Energy Storage Systems or ESSs). These ESSs can be charged during off-peak hours using renewable sources before being discharged during peak times to help power the grid. Many battery ESSs are co-located or located alongside solar PV or wind farms (solar plus storage).
Energy storage helps utilities reduce grid instability, integrate renewable energy sources and time shift generation, enable microgrids, support electric vehicle charging stations, improve reliability in homes and businesses and lower costs by deferring expensive infrastructure upgrades. Its benefits are seen both in terms of reliability and emissions reductions; but also by delaying costly upgrades.
So for instance, by storing PV energy during peak demand times and storing excess production can help eliminate the need for inefficient fossil fuel peaker plants that operate only during peaks in electricity demand – thus helping reduce air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and potentially save on future construction.
It Can Help Avoid Peak Pricing
Energy storage systems are highly valued for their ability to quickly respond to changes or drops in power demand, helping reduce transmission and distribution investments and congestion costs, while helping prevent blackouts by increasing peak power supplies and acting as back up during weather disruptions.
Energy storage offers significant potential savings to commercial, industrial, and municipal facilities by mitigating demand charges or earning revenue in ancillary markets. To take full advantage of its benefits for your facility, it’s critical that you analyze utility rates and tariffs to understand value streams and utility savings associated with installing an energy storage system at your site.
Energy storage systems may be coupled to either AC or DC sources of power; solar generation produces DC energy that needs to be connected directly with an energy storage system (ESS), so the most effective method would be via a DC-to-DC converter. Furthermore, some storage solutions come equipped with micromanagement capabilities that optimize battery performance by controlling every cell individually in real time.
It Can Help Avoid Blackouts
Energy storage allows us to save electricity for later use, creating efficiencies and capabilities that help strengthen the electric grid. It can help to reduce peak demand as well as enable solar power generation to continue operating when it may otherwise not have enough sunlight or wind power available to it.
Avoiding costly spikes in electricity prices caused by peak demand – such as during summer afternoons and evenings when people return home from work and start using air conditioning – is key to keeping costs under control and supporting efficient electricity delivery by inflexible baseload resources.
Energy storage systems can serve as backup power systems in remote communities that live further away from the electric grid, such as homes on islands or microgrids. Energy storage solutions help businesses avoid disruptions to operations while families remain connected and use essential services without interruption. Furthermore, in the unlikely event that there is a battery fire it can be contained without endangering wider populations.
It Can Help Resilient Communities
Energy storage helps the electric grid maintain a delicate equilibrium between electricity supply and demand, helping it adjust during periods of high production or low consumption, then returning it when needed to the grid.
Businesses and residents that install an on-site energy storage system (ESS) can reduce their electricity demand during peak pricing periods, saving money while helping to lower utility demand charges. Energy storage can also be utilized by participants in utility demand response programs.
As climate change, extreme weather events and grid overloads become more severe, it’s becoming increasingly essential to invest in making communities resilient. Energy storage provides essential facilities with an ability to stay open during power outages so people have access to medicine and food services they rely on – not to mention microgrid revenue generation! Energy storage’s equity-enabling properties make it a key element of Non-Wires Alternative Toolkit projects like solar+storage+DER+EE which defer or eliminate costly transmission and distribution infrastructure upgrades altogether.