c. Electricity storage
It has long been accepted wisdom that electricity cannot be stored due to its physical qualities. However, the development of new storage technologies and a dramatic decrease in price have made electricity storage a plausible option. Accordingly, we can expect electricity storage to become an integral part of the future electricity grid.
Electricity storage delays the use of electricity and can play an important role in electricity balancing. As we have said above, energy storage can be seen as positive or negative generation, depending on its use. This is notwithstanding the fact that the overall electricity balance of energy storage is zero: no new energy is created, and the overall demand for energy is not reduced, as the use of the stored energy is merely delayed.
Energy storage does not only play an important role in grid-connected situations, but it is arguably even more important in off-grid or semi off-grid situations. Indeed, for many market actors, going off-grid only becomes an option if energy storage is available. Energy storage provides a solution for the variability of most renewable energy technologies.