Promotion of Higher Penetration of Distributed PV Through Storage for All (StoRES)

Electrochemical storage technology and especially battery energy storage (BES) is emerging as one of the fastest growing storage technologies for grid-connected applications. It has an important role to play in the proposed energy transition offering suitable services for domestic and utility scale applications such as the balancing of the intermittent electricity generated by solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. On the other hand, barriers concerning security and financial compensation must be lifted before it becomes a reliable and profitable option. This paper outlines the primary targets of StoRES project towards eliminating the uncertainties related to battery storage. For this purpose, coupled PV-BES residential storage systems will be developed in five countries aiming at optimizing the utilization of storage towards achieving higher PV penetration. The process of selecting the pilot sites in each country is analyzed highlighting the importance of the selection criteria developed in each country. Another focus of this paper is the implementation of a community (social) storage system which will be installed only in Cyprus. This will be connected to the same distribution feeder supplying the local residential pilot systems in order to make a credible comparison between the centralized and distributed storage. In light of the above, a market research was performed in order to determine and compare the system configurations that will be applied for the pilot system design. Finally, the methodology for acquiring and monitoring the data from the pilot sites along with the expected outputs is outlined.