What is Energy Storage System (ESS)?
In the modern energy landscape, Energy Storage Systems (ESS) will be a pivotal element, by offering solutions to key challenges like intermittency of renewable sources and supply-demand imbalances. With renewable energy supply gaining global traction, the ESS also will also become more essential to store the excess energy to be used when needed.
Not only for storing renewable energy, ESS has many other implications in numerous residential, commercial and industrial, and grid facilities. let’s take a look into what ESS entails and why is it going to get even more traction in the near future.
What does ESS do?
Energy Storage Systems are basically some giant battery packs that similar to any other battery, they can get charged and discharged when you need them to!
You already can guess some of the implications of them, but let me list some of many uses that these systems have:
Most common implications of ESS
Renewable energy integration
We all know that the renewable energy generation might not be at it’s peak at all times, and it might disappoint when you need it at some certain hours, also, it might generate more power than we can use at other times. Renewable energy would make much more sense if we could store the excess generated energy that is not used and put it into use when the power generation might not be able to support the demand!
Energy storage systems are widely used for this purpose in various scales to store the extra generated electricity and pour it into the system when needed.
Backup power
In many occasions, users can not afford power outages and fluctuations, and even though power suppliers do their best to prevent outages, it might happen time to time. So for those who don’t want to risk it, integrating and Energy Storage System (ESS) into their facility would be an options to mitigate the risks.
The risks and costs for power outages and fluctuations vary for different users, it might be equal to production line shutdown or damage for a manufacturer, it might endanger patient’s life in hospitals, or it might as well mean disconnecting from playing your favorite online game with your friends at home. All in all, wherever the power outage might be problematic, the ESS can save the day.
Grid support
While users can use the ESS for back up power supply, the power providers can also use the advantages that these systems bring. They can quickly respond to fluctuations in grid frequency by injecting or absorbing power as needed. This helps to stabilize grid frequency and voltage within acceptable limits, ensuring that the electrical grid operates on its optimal state.
Load shifting and energy arbitrage
Power prices at peak or regular hours can become very significant for heavy users such as production and manufacturing companies, EV charging stations or any other entity that requires big loads of electricity. Even though the price per kilowatt of electricity might look insignificant, but when you are using thousands of kilowatts of energy, each cent becomes important.
Using the energy storage systems, users can store the electricity at the regular hours of the day and use it during peak hours. It means that the user is going to save the difference between the peak and regular hours costs which are not a small sum when it comes to heavy usage.
At the age we are living in, the necessity of access to constant energy is at it’s highest in the history. A single hour or in some occasions, a single second of outage, fluctuations in frequency or voltage, can cause catastrophic damages to people, machinery, businesses, and entire networks. Even though they do not happen frequently in most locations, the risk mitigation is one of the essential steps to be taken for all entities that heavily rely on the power.
There are many ways to mitigate these risks and prevent the damages, and they have been implemented for as long as these risks have existed. Energy Storage Systems (ESS) are merely one of the preventive measures and steps that are taken.
