Energy storage opportunities related to distributed generation

By their very nature, dispersed power generators (DG) planned for individual consumer-site installation are small units of roughly the capacity of the single energy consumer, located in very close proximity to his load. As such, they see the noncoincident load behavior of the consumer's loads, rather than the coincident load curve shape most typically used in electric system planning. Often, utility interconnection is not a viable alternative for a small DG system, because either there are no utility facilities nearby or the utility's interconnection charge is too costly to justify. The other option is energy storage. The DG unit is usually connected to a battery or flywheel storage system, and its controls are set to make it react to changes in demand very slowly, if at all. Power to meet needle peak demands is then pulled from the storage system, with the DG basically charging it during periods of low load. This results in "coincident-like" loading of the DG unit.