Overview of new energy storage systems for an improved power quality and load managing on distribution level

Since a few years, problems regarding power quality issues in general become more and more of interest. Power quality problems have their own negative influence on both technical and economical aspects of modern society. Solving some of them as voltage sags, needs the input of large amounts of power (peak power during a short time). This input of energy requires of course different 'energy reservoirs'. Also to be sure that the supply and demand of electrical energy are in balance, it is sometimes recommended to own a 'bulk of energy'. During the years, several kinds of storage systems were developed for electrical energy and the research for new storage systems is still going on. Most systems store the electrical energy in an other type of energy. New systems are developed to store electrical energy in a direct way by using superconducting technologies and improved material characteristics. In this paper, the authors give a brief overview of those new technical solutions as superconducting magnetic energy storage, super capacitors and redox flow batteries. To make a comparison with other methods, (older or oncoming techniques), they are briefly discussed.