7. Electricity Storage: A New Flexibility Option for Future Power Systems

This present chapter aims at positioning storage technologies with respect to the current market designs and regulatory schemes, thus investigating ways and means to ease a cost-effective, market-based deployment and operation, with a special attention paid to Europe. This approach should help in avoiding any a priori opinion favouring long-term investments in storage systems. Indeed, future electricity systems will face challenges such as significant increases in variability and intermittency of generation, the rapid growth of distributed energy/power resources including distributed generation, the penetration of electric vehicles and controllable demand and deployment of smart appliances enabling active demand response. A growing interplay between transmission and distribution levels will then be necessary. Future power systems will therefore need a properly designed, market-based system architecture allowing for decarbonisation while ensuring system reliability and security of supply. Electricity storage is one among several options to provide system services such as capacity firming, back-up capacity, voltage and frequency regulation. Implementing electricity storage solutions thus requires an in-depth understanding of possible services that electricity storage can meet, along with several other grid and generation- and demand-side assets.