Electricity storage is attracting much attention as storage manufacturers begin to announce rapid reductions in the technology’s costs, utilities publicize upcoming deployments, and states evaluate new policy initiatives. Interest in electricity storage is driven by a range of potential applications that include avoiding power outages for customers, reinforcing the grid, reducing other transmission and distribution (T&D) costs, shifting power consumption away from costly peak-load periods, balancing intermittent renewable energy resources, and providing ancillary services and emergency response services in the wholesale power markets. While the potential value of these and other storage applications have long been recognized, electricity storage costs have not been competitive with alternative technologies and resources that can provide comparable services. Therefore, electricity storage investments to date have been deployed primarily as demonstration projects.

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