Energireserver

Energireserver is a term used to describe systems or assets that store energy for later use in order to balance electricity supply and demand, improve reliability, and facilitate the integration of intermittent renewable generation such as wind and solar. These storage assets can be standalone facilities or integrated with power plants, grids, or microgrids.

Energireservers come in several forms. Mechanical storage includes pumped-storage hydroelectricity and compressed air energy storage. Electrochemical storage encompasses batteries, notably lithium-ion and flow batteries, as well as emerging technologies such as solid-state variants. Thermal storage uses heat or cold to shift energy over time, while chemical energy carriers like hydrogen allow energy to be produced, stored, and converted back to electricity or other fuels as needed.

Key performance characteristics include capacity (measured in megawatts of power and megawatt-hours of energy), response time (ranging from seconds to minutes), round-trip efficiency, degradation over time, and total lifetime cost. The primary grid services provided by energireservers are frequency regulation, spinning and non-spinning reserves, ramping support for variable generation, peak-shaving, and emergency backup power. They also enable energy arbitrage and firming of renewables in some markets.

Deployment considerations involve capital and operating costs, siting and land use, environmental impact, and regulatory or market rules that determine eligibility for ancillary services and capacity markets. While pumped-storage remains a widely deployed form of large-scale storage, rapid growth in battery storage and other technologies is expanding the role of energireservers in modern power systems.