Centralized coordination of small-scale energy storage systems, such as home batteries, can offer different services to the grid, like operational flexibility and peak shaving. This paper investigates how centralized coordination versus distributed operation of residential electricity storage could impact the savings of owners.
Residential consumers can accumulate greater savings with a centralized energy system, ranging from 2-5% when operating no technology, 3-11% with Energy Energy Storage Systems (EES) alone, 2-5% with Photovoltaic (PV) alone, and 0-2% with both PV and EES.
The impact of centralized coordination of storage resources on residential consumers' annual electricity costs generally increases with the level of variable renewable generation capacity in the electricity system while inversely related to the level of flexible supply capacity.
You can store electricity in electrical batteries, or convert it into heat and stored in a heat battery. You can also store heat in thermal storage, such as a hot water cylinder. Energy storage can be useful if you already generate your own renewable energy, as it lets you use more of your low carbon energy.
Energy-storage systems, also known as batteries or thermal stores, allow you to capture heat or electricity when it is available (for example, from a solar PV system during daylight, from a wind turbine when it’s windy, or from a log boiler when burning batches of logs), and then save it until a time when it can be useful to you.
Distributed energy storage refers to small-scale energy storage systems located at the end user site that increase self-consumption of variable renewable energy such as solar and wind energy. These systems can be centrally coordinated to offer different services to the grid, such as operational flexibility and peak shaving.