The growing demand for high quality and reliable electric power, and the recent advances in energy storage, will likely result in energy storage becoming a much more important component of the electric power infrastructure.

While primarily the focus of energy storage has been as a means of managing grid-scale variable loads, it can also be employed in a number of other roles which benefit all of the major subsystems of a typical electric power grid, including: generation, transmission, distribution and demand (end-users).

Because of the different operational requirements of these subsystems, a wide variety of storage technologies are being developed around the world which complement proven energy storage technologies, such as pump hydroelectric storage (PHS) and batteries. The effectiveness of a given energy storage technology, to a large extent, depends on the specific application for which the technology is used and as such technologies that can be applied in several alternative applications may not necessarily feature the same performance characteristics in each application. Therefore, it is important to map the typical utility-scale applications against the operational requirements at such scales which will allow the feasibility of using a particular energy storage technology to be evaluated.

This presentation aims to assist the audience in arriving at such an understanding and presents a list of the key utility-scale applications and their performance measures.