Time Shifting

Simply put, the ability to consume and store energy energy when prices are low and utilize that energy when prices are higher. For commercial consumers, taking full advantage of TOU (time of use) pricing can result in significant savings. The use of time shifting removes some of the unpredictability of high market wholesale rates in peak price periods and allows for deferral to periods of lower prices (usually at night).

Customer Energy Management

In addition to time shifting, the quality and reliability of the power can be assured during the discharge phase of the process. Depending on the amount of storage built into the design, backup power for hours or days could be kept on hand in case of outages.

Infrastructure Efficiency

By including storage, transmission assets can forego costly upgrades and the storage can offset the peak congestion spikes that would otherwise require capacity upgrades.

Smoothing

For large grids, storage can help with the multitude of small intraday spikes and drops in demand that occur both at the overall grid level and locally where the actual imbalances occur. This allows for a reduction in the need for expensive standby power generation or imports from other grids.

Renewable Microgrids

In isolated communities, full reliance on renewable power generation (sun and wind) necessitates storage as the sun and wind are not available 100% of the time. Many of these communities currently rely on diesel generators and the cost of fuel delivery is extremely expensive.