Reliability Augmentation: Electrical energy storage can provide improved reliability (see above).
Whether there is a business case for a utility or an energy consumer to use it for that purpose depends
on a host of factors that need to be analyzed for the specific situation and need. Among them are,
how good (or bad) is reliability now? Is there even a need for improvement? Numerous demand-side
(utility customer) issues and factors including peak demand, energy needs and load curve shape need
to be included, along with the value of uninterrupted, or less interrupted, service to the particularly
energy consumer. A host of utility system issues have to be considered including the cost of fitting
the equipment to the site and controlling and monitoring it so it will perform as needed.
Making Renewable Energy Dispatchable:
This benefit was listed under the basic capabilities of energy storage but it is perhaps the most
valuable benefit energy storage can provide and almost certainly the application that will lead to very
widespread use of electric energy storage in the 21st century.
Renewable energy from solar, wind, and other technologies makes good sense from so many
perspectives. But except for a few niche technologies that are difficult to site and fit to systems (solar
tower generation), renewable generation systems are not dispatchable sources of power. Energy
storage makes them so. Renewable energy systems also contribute to existing reliability and
regulation problems for widespread power grids. Energy storage provides the means to mitigate
those, too.
Many of the “fundamental concepts” and mainstream ways electric energy storage is used in power
systems have not yet been determined or set in the power industry. There may never be a “typical”
way electric energy storage is used for this type of application. One reason is that the storage does
not have to be located at or operated in conjunction with the renewable generation in order to
provide this benefit. For example, the owner of a 50 MW wind plant could install energy storage at
the plant or at a site electrically convenient to it. A study of past wind and weather cycles, and the
plant's design and expected reliability, and the region's grid load and operation might determine
that 110 MW hours of storage with a 65 MW peak output capability would give the owner a 99.98%
probability of meeting peak commitments if contracted – better than for a coal plant. Installed and
operated in conjunction with the wind farm, this would make the farm's output dispatchable power.
But a farmer 80 miles away could also install storage, and what is actually a fairly simple buying
control system to operate it, sufficient to allow her to buy non-dispatchable power from the grid
when it is a bargain (when wind farms are producing lots of power) and store it for use when she
needs it to run her business or power her home. Again, a study would be needed to determine the
characteristics of the storage – how much energy it would store, what peak load it could serve, how
fast it could recharge, etc. That would need to include a comprehensive look at a number of factors,
but the unit that would do the job for the farmer could be determined and once installed, she would
get power when she needed it but buy cheap non-dispatchable power from the grid when she could.
The interesting point here is that both of these alternatives are very realistic: current technologies can
do either well, and also permit a range of choices between these two extremes. The storage required
to make all the wind farms‟ output into dispatchable power could be added in one large system at the
wind farm site, or dispersed as dozens, perhaps hundreds of smaller installations at customer sites.
Characteristics would vary: probably more net storage capability would need for the dispersed
scenario, but that would provide more benefits, too (in addition to having dispatchable power all the
time, the farmer would have power, for a while, if the utility system was experiencing an outage of
service).