New energy storage devices for an improved load managing on distribution level

For a few years, problems regarding power quality issues in general have become of increasing interest. They have their own negative influence on several aspects of modern society. The problems in industry have been addressed for a longer period of time. However, home and nonmanufacturing industries also suffer from a lack of power quality. Besides the visual disadvantages, such as flicker, electronic equipment and domotic systems are very sensitive to deviations in mains voltage. To avoid these problems, one can use power supplies which are redundant during normal mains supply, but become active in the case of voltage sags or in cases of total loss of power. All these systems are based on the storage of energy. During recent years, more powerful techniques like superconducting magnetic storage systems (SMES) and systems with supercapacitors, as alternatives for the conventional solutions, have become attractive. Recently, redox flow batteries gave another alternative. A literature study is carried out to present an overview of the advantages and drawbacks of these new storage systems against the existing systems, and to study their usefulness in the distribution grid.