Distributed Renewable Energies for Off-Grid Communities

Chapter Thirteen

Energy Storage, Smart Grids and Electric Vehicles

13.1 Energy Storage

Energy storage is accomplished by devices or physical media that store some form of energy to perform some useful operation at a later time. A device that stores energy is sometimes called an accumulator (Figure 13.1).

Figure 13.1 District heating accumulation tower from Theiss near Krems an der Donau in Lower Austria with a thermal capacity of 2 GWh.

(Ulrichulrich 2010).

All forms of energy are either potential energy (e.g., chemical, gravitational, electrical energy, etc.) or kinetic energy (e.g., thermal energy) (Wagner 2007).

The general method and specific ...