Why is energy storage so important to managing ever-growing levels of distributed energy resources? Energy storage is a superset asset – no resource has more flexibility to serve as generation or load and to produce or absorb both real and reactive power. Therefore, the development of this technology is crucial to the electricity distribution evolution and its ability to absorb the coming tide of distributed solar and electric vehicles. The past two decades have seen two waves of front-of-the-meter energy storage growth: the pilot wave, followed by the grid-connected wave. However, the most important wave – the utility-integrated wave – is just beginning to build and more needs to be done to accelerate it by both the industry delivering the technology and the utilities adopting it.
