The Way Forward for Energy Storage Grid Fees

EASE has prepared a general overview and the best practices across member states, when looking at the way forward for energy storage grid fees. Energy storage doesn’t receive the same treatment across the European Union as far as grid fees go: different technologies, different location (behind-the-meter vs front of the meter), have to face a variety of tariff structures, often not consistent with the EU-level rules as set by the Electricity Market Regulation.

To make sure grid fees don’t hinder energy storage development, EASE recommends:

• Full implementation of the Clean Energy Package market design;
• An analysis of network investments and the procurement of flexibility by system operators;
• Grid tariff design should follow the main principle of cost-reflectiveness;
• Behind-the-Meter energy storage systems should receive the same treatment as self-consumed energy which remains within the prosumer’s premises;
• Tariff methodologies and procurement of flexibility should contribute to the deployment of energy storage.

In the Annex to this paper, a detailed description of the best practices carried out in Ireland (temporary abolition of generation related charges for commercial energy storage providers) and Portugal (for collective self-consumers and renewable energy communities, the use of the internal grid between a self-consumption unit and the consumption unit is exempted from grid fee payment) can be found.