Benefits

• Current trends are towards a more active role of consumers and towards the development of advanced energy storage.
• Energy storage solutions are expected to develop on a grid scale (at the level of an entire power system) and on a small scale (at the level of household and other consumers).

To be able to maintain the current level of security of supply for future consumers, while accommodating the growing share of renewable energy sources in the generation mix, the following two trajectories are vital considering the present state and technological development:

• Empowering consumers to play a more active role, and/or
• Accelerating the development of advanced grid-scale (at power system level) and small-scale (at the level of household and other consumers)energy storage.

Consumers that play an active role in the system are able and motivated to respond to system requirements by increasing or reducing their demand.   

Using technological solutions, such consumers can be aggregated into larger groups of active players to replace grid-scale power plants.

In addition to active players, distributed small-scale generation sources can also be aggregated to complement the former group.

Advanced energy storage systems are used:

• on a small scale, i.e. at the level of distributed small-scale storage systems at home or in electric vehicles, and/or
• on a grid scale, when advanced storage systems are combined in large containers and placed in one of the power system hubs.

Small-scale storage units are integrated into larger, grid-scale systems by means of aggregation, in a similar way as consumers.

Grid-scale energy storage is an area of rapid development worldwide. Despite the growing share of unreliable, variable renewable energy, grid-scale energy storage and demand response will be vital to security of power supply by contributing substantially to supply- and demand-side flexibility.