Description
A rapidly growing contribution by renewable energies to the overall energy production can be expected worldwide. Most renewables, like wind, PV or solar-thermal, are fluctuating resources. With increasing integration of renewable energies energy storage and energy balancing capacities are needed. So far the focus is on large, central and most cost effective energy storage technologies like pumped hydro or the conversion of surplus electricity into hydrogen. The potential and contribution of small and medium sized, distributed energy storage (DES) technologies to balance fluctuation caused by renewable energies is mostly unexplored.
Distributed energy storages (DES) can be defined by their location within an energy system. In this perspective DES can either be located
- at the consumer side (household up to small industrial application), or
- decentralized in the distribution grid, or
- at decentralized power generation sites (e.g. small biogas plant or single wind mill).
