A battery storage power plant is a form of storage power plant, which uses batteries on an electrochemical basis for energy storage.
Battery storage power plants, like all storage power plants, primarily serve to cover peak load and in networks with insufficient control power and the grid stabilization.
Since they do not require any mechanical movement, battery storage power plants allow extremely short control times and start times, in the range of few 10s of ms at full load. Thanks to that reactivity, they can shave power peaks in the range of minutes, but they can also dampen the fast oscillations (second) that appear when electric power networks are operated close to their maximum capacity. These instabilities consist in voltage fluctuations with periods of up to several 10 seconds and can soar in worst cases to high amplitudes, which can lead to regional blackouts. A battery storage power plants properly dimensioned can efficiently counteract these oscillations. Therefore, applications are found primarily in those regions where electrical power systems are operated at full capacity, causing a risk in the grid stability. Large storage plants can also be used in combination with intermittent renewable energy source.