Battery storage technologies, applications and trend in renewable energy

As the battery technologies offer desirable characteristics at competitive cost, their applications have broadened significantly within the last decade covering all areas of power systems: from generation to transmission and distribution levels. In addition, battery storage technologies offer solutions to a range of network problems which are weak, long and thin, have large load variations, and have low power system inertia. The network problems may also be associated with fringe-of-grid areas that are likely to experience reliability and power quality issues. In addition, as the penetration of renewable energy resources increases, further problems also emerged primarily related to the intermittency of such resources. This paper aims to address the battery storage technologies in the light of a complete system topology while presenting a broader view about the future trends. Since their interactions in an ever growing complexity of microgrid applications need special attention, main emphasis is also given to highlight the impact of renewable energy utilising battery storage solutions. Finally, the energy storage test system developed is explained to provide insight to accelerate the technology by real tests on system components and applications, knowledge sharing and training.