Services to Support Distribution Infrastructure

The Task Force on Segmentation of Applications has developed the Services to Support Distribution Infrastructure Report, among other application descriptions. This work builds on the Summary of Energy Storage Applications published in June 2020.

This overview provides a summary of different energy storage applications that can provide alternative or traditional grid infrastructures at the distribution level. As the variable renewable energy sources are deployed regularly, these emerging services are gaining importance on the EU Market.

Services to Distribution Infrastructure are composed of six key systems:

1. Distribution Grid Upgrade Deferral: using energy storage to defer or avoid distribution infrastructure upgrades and solve distribution congestion issues by installing energy storage systems instead of new lines; using energy storage as a distribution grid component to decrease the traditional grid size during the grid planning process by basing its design on a medium power value and not a peak power value.
2. Contingency Grid Support: using energy storage to perform some capacity/voltage support in order to reduce the impacts of the loss of a major grid component. It refers to redundancy provisions to cover the trip of the largest transmission line in an area.
3. Dynamic Local Voltage Control: using energy storage to maintain the voltage profile within admissible contractual/regulatory limits.
4. Intentional Islanding: using energy storage to energise a non-loopable feeder during an outage.
5. Reactive Power Compensation: using energy storage to reduce the amount of reactive energy drawn from transmission and charged by the TSO to the DSO.
6. Cross Sectoral Storage: the practice of coupling the electricity sector with other energy sectors (gas, fuel, heat) by converting excess supply of electricity to the grid into energy carriers, synthetic fuels, and heat, thus avoiding curtailment of running power generators (RES, thermal power plants, etc.).