Energy storage a ‘friend’ to DNOs, says entrepreneur

Energy storage technology is a “friend of the network operator and utilities” because it reduces peak and imbalance charges, the chief executive of smart tech firm Moixa, Simon Daniel has said.

Speaking to Utility Week, Daniel insisted storage is at the epicentre of the shift from centralised power sources to grid-edge, distributed and decentralised power. He said: “Because of the long tail of energy generation, including a lot more wind, solar, fuel cell, and end-user demand response, storage is seen as a way which helps the user but, more particularly, helps the network operator.”

“There’s little point in producing excess energy in the middle of the day which is wasted for the grid, when actually that energy is needed in the evening,” he said. “The only way to make solar pay… is to have storage or a good system for managing it.”

He added that, if the “right amount” of storage is installed in the home it can be an asset to the networks, who can use it to balance when an electric vehicle goes on or to balance the voltage or to act as a reserve.

“That’s the correct way to do it,” he said.

There are already problems in the UK, with utility networks in the north, particularly, struggling to incorporate new renewables into their networks. In the southern part of the country too, networks are constrained on capacity in urban spaces due to high demand.

“In a number of places it [the utilities system] is breaking down,” Daniel said. “Storage is seen as a solution for that because it reduces peak, it also gives more grid-edge resilience to the system.”

Moixa Technology was formed in 2010 as a new venture subsidiary from Moixa Energy Holdings. In 2013, the firm was one of two to win a share of more than £5 million as part of the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s innovation competition to support energy storage research and demonstration.