Advantages and disadvantages of container distributed energy storage

Distributed energy storage is a solution for increasing self-consumption of variable renewable energy such as solar and wind energy at the end user site. Small-scale energy storage systems can be centrally coordinated by "aggregation" to offer different services to the grid, such as operational flexibility and peak shaving.

Private benefits of storage aggregation drops by 20% if aggregated storage devices increase five-fold. Distributed energy storage is a solution for increasing self-consumption of variable renewable energy such as solar and wind energy at the end user site.

From modelling method perspective, this implies that models of the electricity system should account for the trade-offs between private and system benefits of energy storage aggregation. Yet it is unlikely that consumers will allow an aggregator to control their resources at all unless they are paid a financial incentive to do so .

The impact of centralized coordination of storage resources on the consumer's annual electricity costs generally increases with the level of variable renewable generation capacity in the electricity system while inversely related to level of flexible supply capacity.

As more consumers, and the wider electricity system, adopt electricity storage technologies, herding behaviour could occur: many cost-minimizing consumers with an incentive to shift electricity demand to the same periods of low electricity prices, which will ultimately lead to an increased electricity demand and price peaks.

This paper examines the possible economic impact of owning a demand-side energy storage on the savings to a typical domestic consumer equipped with a solar PV microgeneration system. We conclude that pairing solar PV with storage could reduce electricity bills for a typical UK consumer by 80–88%.