Utility Support

Energy storage systems can be used to follow load, stabilize voltage & frequency, manage peak loads, improve power quality, defer upgrade investments, and support renewables. The chart at left shows the power and discharge time requirements for a variety of storage applications in the utility industry. 

Electricity storage provides several benefits for electric power utilities, transmission companies, electricity generators, and electric power end users.  These benefits include: reduced financial losses due to poor power quality and power outages, energy price arbitrage involving charging with low priced “off-peak” energy for use later when energy cost and price is high, and a variety of services that can be described, but which may or may not provide revenue at present.  An economist might say that though the benefits exist, they are not internalized, meaning that today no mechanism whereby the supplier can accrue revenue from the benefit. 

Simply put, the electricity market is not economically efficient because of the way the services are priced.  Over the past decade or so, which has seen several attempts at reregulation, the value of the benefits that electricity storage can provide have been expanded and quantified.  Some have been evaluated, isolated, and even demonstrated.  The latter include, for example, the class of benefits called “distributed” benefits (those which accrue because of the location of the storage capacity), and benefits associated with superior performance of the transmission system.