Aggregation of Distributed Residential Energy Storage for Enhanced Grid Resilience and Renewable Energy Growth

Distributed residential energy storage is a scalable path to enable renewable energy generation growth and increase grid resilience. Due to the high cost of battery energy storage systems (BESS), property owners typically purchase BESSs with energy capacities of 5-15 kWh despite needing  50-80 kWh to power an average home for several days during an electrical outage. The value of larger BESSs cannot be realized because there is currently no mechanism for them to service the electricity grid.

The project aim is to develop a hardware-software interface that can synchronize distributed residential BESSs to optimize benefits to the electricity grid while meeting the needs of consumers. By aggregating residential BESS capacity to benefit the electricity system operator, property owners will be incentivized to purchase larger BESSs, optimizing the lifetime value of those systems through servicing the electricity grid. This would create a distributed energy storage system with improved resiliency; reducing single points of failure for the grid operator, providing redundancy, enhancing grid stability, and offering localized energy management and adaptability.  

Imagine a day in Nova Scotia with 25 thousand homes (~8% of single-detached homes) each housing a small appliance-sized 50 kWh battery pack, amounting to 1.25 GWh of energy storage capacity, approximately enough to power the entire province for an hour.  Renewable energy generation supplies 75% of the province’s energy requirement and operates with reduced curtailment, optimizing wind and solar utilization. Homeowners have backup power for 2-3 days during outages. For this to become reality, distributed BESSs need to be aggregated and treated as both a single system and individual units. 

The technology proposed here strategically benefits both homeowners and grid operators by reducing the cost of larger BESSs for homeowners, providing longer backup service and electricity grid resiliency for the province.