Benefits of energy storage
Energy storage is an enabling technology, which – when paired with energy generated using renewable resources – can save consumers money, improve reliability and resilience, integrate generation sources, and help reduce environmental impacts.
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Investment in energy storage created long-term reliability.
Energy storage is a critical hub for the entire grid, augmenting resources from wind, solar and hydro, to nuclear and fossil fuels, to demand side resources and system efficiency assets.
It can act as a generation, transmission or distribution asset – sometimes in a single asset.
Ultimately, storage is an enabling technology. It can save consumers money, improve reliability and resilience, integrate generation sources, and help reduce environmental impacts.
All in one.
Energy storage saves money
Energy storage can save operational costs in powering the grid, as well as save money for electricity consumers who install energy storage in their homes and businesses. Energy storage can reduce the cost to provide frequency regulation and spinning reserve services, as well as offset the costs to consumers by storing low-cost energy and using it later, during peak periods at higher electricity rates.
By using energy storage during brief outages, businesses can avoid costly disruptions and continue normal operations. Residents can save themselves from lost food and medicines, and the inconvenience of not having electricity. And there is an option for both businesses and residential consumers to participate in demand response programs when available.
Energy storage improves resilience and reliability
Energy storage can provide backup power during disruptions. The same concept that applies to backup power for an individual device (e.g., a smoke alarm that plugs into a home but also has battery backup), can be scaled up to an entire building or even the grid at large.
Storage provides flexibility for the grid, to ensure uninterrupted power to consumers, whenever and wherever they need it. This flexibility is critical to both reliability and resilience. As the cost of outages continues to rise, the value of enhanced reliability and improvements in resilience also increases.
Energy storage integrates diverse resources
Energy storage can smooth out the delivery of variable or intermittent resources such as wind and solar, by storing excess energy when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, and delivering it when the opposite is happening.
But storage can also support the efficient delivery of electricity for inflexible, baseload resources. When demand changes quickly, and flexibility is required, energy storage can inject or extract electricity as needed to exactly match load – wherever, and whenever it’s needed.
Energy storage is an enabling technology. When the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing, energy storage can be there. When demand shifts and baseload resources can’t react quickly enough, energy storage can be there.
Energy storage reduces environmental impact
In simplest terms, energy storage enables electricity to be saved for a later, when and where it is most needed. This creates efficiencies and capabilities for the electric grid—including the ability to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
By introducing more flexibility into the grid, energy storage can help integrate more solar, wind and distributed energy resources. It can also improve the efficiency of the grid – increasing the capacity factor of existing resources – and offset the need for building new pollution-emitting peak power plants.
As our energy supply mix gets cleaner with low- and no-carbon resources, energy storage helps that supply mix evolve more easily and reliably.
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