Power Reliability

A storage system can effectively support customer loads when there is a total loss of power from the source utility. This support requires the storage system and customer loads to island during the utility outage and resynchronize with the utility when power is restored. The energy capacity of the storage system relative to the size of the load it is protecting determines the time duration that the storage can serve that load. This time can be extended by supplementing the storage system with on-site diesel gen-sets that can continue supporting the load for long-duration outages that are beyond the capacity of the storage system.

The storage system can be owned by the customer and is under customer control at all times. An alternate ownership scenario could be that the storage system is owned by the utility and is treated as a demand-side, dispatchable resource that serves the customer needs as well as being available to the utility as a demand reduction resource.