Assessing the Energy Equity Benefits of Energy Storage Solutions

Abstract

Safety, reliability, efficiency, and affordability are no longer the sole tenets of electric grid planning. The evolving social and policy climate have placed new explicit requirements to integrate energy equity and justice strategies in modern electric grid design to achieve a fair and just distribution of environmental, economic, and social benefits within the energy system. This study aims to characterize the energy equity and community benefits of energy storage systems (ESS) under the following three use case models: utility ESS that are operated within the distribution system, community-owned ESS, and behind-the-meter ESS that are customer-owned to serve the household. A resource adequacy analysis of a representative feeder subject to six outage scenarios is performed to assess energy access as a key equity metric in each use case. The energy access analysis can be used to inform further research on additional energy equity metrics such as energy burden, energy poverty, energy vulnerability, resilience, decarbonization, and job creation to create a prioritization framework matching community needs with system preferences for utility planning processes, market regulations, and the wider network of energy system stakeholders.