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This review analyzes energy storage technologies for medium and low voltage networks, suggesting improvements for operational reliability.
High penetration of variable renewable energy sources is increasing operational stress on medium‐ and low‐voltage (MV/LV) distribution networks with limited hosting capacity. This paper presents a comprehensive review of grid‐scale and distribution‐level energy storage technologies and systematically maps their technical characteristics, response time, discharge duration, efficiency, lifetime and scalability to key MV/LV grid services, including voltage regulation, frequency support, peak shaving and network resilience. For the South African context, the review identifies critical deployment challenges such as transformer overloading, overvoltage caused by clustered photovoltaic systems, regulatory compliance limits and tariff and market barriers. A community energy storage and management framework is proposed to enable coordinated local energy balancing, demand response and improved reliability at the distribution level. The analysis shows that battery energy storage systems offer the greatest flexibility for MV/LV applications, while high‐power technologies such as flywheels and supercapacitors are best suited for fast power‐quality and frequency‐support services. The paper concludes by outlining policy and planning measures required to enable large‐scale, economically viable MV/LV energy storage deployment in South Africa.
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Mushid et al. (2026) studied this question.
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