GRID APPLICATIONS FOR ENERGY STORAGE

Project Abstract: Power system economists say that Electricity can be treated as a commodity, and can be bought and sold like any other in a specially designed power market. But that is not all, a key attribute which makes Electricity stand out is the fact that at all possible time instants, the supply needs to match the demand wholly. Unlike other standard commodities, a mismatch in supply-demand is not feasible. This essentially means that power generation at all times should match its consumption in turn implying that the dynamism of consumption must be tackled by the generation units. To address the relaxation of this direct interdependence between production and consumption of electricity, we have what is called the concept of Grid Energy Storage. Grid Energy Storage refers to the means of storing electricity at a large scale in a power grid. In an extremely crude sense, Electrical energy is stored during times when production (from power plants) exceeds consumption and the stores are used at times when consumption exceeds production. In this way, electricity production need not be drastically scaled up and down to meet momentary consumption instead, production is maintained at a more constant level. Storage is poised to become an important element of the electricity infrastructure in the future mainly because of its multi-faceted propositions. On the face of it, there are two possible branches of subject which can be pursued namely the technology, and applications. This project will briefly touch upon and introduce some of the currently used storage implementation techniques such as pumped hydro, flywheel, batteries, etc. The major focus of attention would be on its applications and the concerned economics. Under current global transition towards smart grid era, the generation, transmission and distribution sectors of power industry are expected to change drastically over the coming decades. Rising levels of renewable penetration in power grid would inevitably call for installation of large number of storage units due to the extremely fluctuating and volatile output profile of the renewable energy plants (majorly solar and wind). So the storage units help firm the renewable output. Thus, the primary applications which this project would explore will be Facilitating Renewable/Intermittent Generation Integration, and Producing Ancillary Services to the Regular Grid. Besides this, the project shall also explore the prospect of storage units acting as Market Arbitragers which in turn can possibly the economic factor as far as the feasibility of these projects are concerned.