EASE has prepared a short summary on one of the following energy storage application groups - Services to Support Transmission Infrastructure.
November 2021 / Reports and Studies
Services to Support Distribution Infrastructure
The Task Force on Segmentation of Applications has developed the Services to Support Distribution Infrastructure Report, among other application descriptions. This work builds on the Summary of Energy Storage Applications published in June 2020.
This overview provides a summary of different energy storage applications that can provide alternative or traditional grid infrastructures at the distribution level. As the variable renewable energy sources are deployed regularly, these emerging services are gaining importance on the EU Market.
Services to Distribution Infrastructure are composed of six key systems:
Distribution Grid Upgrade Deferral: using energy storage to defer or avoid distribution infrastructure upgrades and solve distribution congestion issues by installing energy storage systems instead of new lines; using energy storage as a distribution grid component to decrease the traditional grid size during the grid planning process by basing its design on a medium power value and not a peak power value.
Contingency Grid Support: using energy storage to perform some capacity/voltage support in order to reduce the impacts of the loss of a major grid component. It refers to redundancy provisions to cover the trip of the largest transmission line in an area.
Dynamic Local Voltage Control: using energy storage to maintain the voltage profile within admissible contractual/regulatory limits.
Intentional Islanding: using energy storage to energise a non-loopable feeder during an outage.
Reactive Power Compensation: using energy storage to reduce the amount of reactive energy drawn from transmission and charged by the TSO to the DSO.
Cross Sectoral Storage: the practice of coupling the electricity sector with other energy sectors (gas, fuel, heat) by converting excess supply of electricity to the grid into energy carriers, synthetic fuels, and heat, thus avoiding curtailment of running power generators (RES, thermal power plants, etc.).
On 12 July 2022, over 180 participants attended the webinar on how much energy storage does Europe need. The webinar aimed to discuss the huge role energy storage has to play in the evolving energy system, and shed light on how much energy storage will be needed, building upon our estimates in the recently published EASE review paper ‘Energy Storage Targets 2030 and 2050’.
EASE has estimated that the European Union no-regret requirements for energy storage are 200 GW by 2030 and 600 GW by 2050. Current market trajectories for storage will fail to meet these requirements if urgent measures to boost deployment are not taken now. Yet, energy storage is an essential component for enabling renewables integration and establishing a secure, low-emission and affordable energy system.
EASE has prepared a general overview and the best practices across member states, when looking at the way forward for energy storage grid fees. Energy storage doesn’t receive the same treatment across the European Union as far as grid fees go: different technologies, different location (behind-the-meter vs front of the meter), have to face a variety of tariff structures, often not consistent with the EU-level rules as set by the Electricity Market Regulation.
The EASE Task Force on Multi-Services Business Cases for Energy Storage has prepared a report looking at the key role of energy storage as a Local Flexibility provider. This paper gives an overview of existing short-term local flexibility schemes in Europe today including Active-network management (ANM) and other flexibility services and their implications on the business case for energy storage.
