Utility Energy Storage Strategies
Energy storage is quickly becoming an integral part of electric utility grids and an important resource helping utility companies meet their core mission of safely, reliably and cost effectively delivering electricity to customers. Stakeholders throughout the utility value chain are deploying energy storage for a varied and diverse set of applications:
Residential, commercial and industrial customers are deploying energy storage systems to enhance resilience and lower peak demand charges.
Wholesale electricity markets are modifying rules to enable energy storage to provide area balancing services and frequency regulation.
Wholesale market participants in power generation are deploying energy storage to firm wind and solar generation systems, and provide peaking power.
Utility companies are deploying energy storage to defer transmission and distribution investments, reduce peak power costs, stabilize their distribution system operations, enabling higher levels of variable renewable energy, among other applications.
The emergence of battery energy storage as a practical solution as only emerged in recent years due to significant cost reductions, opening up new applications and markets from a cost effectiveness perspective. There remain significant cost challenges that are limiting even broader applicability of energy storage to a wider array of potential applications. It is within this environment that utility companies are being appropriately selective on integrating energy storage into their planning processes and systems without assuming undue financial, technical and operating risks and exposures.
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