Storage technologies have a huge financial impact on the clean energy sector by reducing financial losses due to outages and poor power quality. They can improve the return the investments in renewable energy structure and reduce end-user electricity costs.
Because of their abilities, storage devices represent an important component of micro-grids; this structure being, basically, a weak electrical grid which can be easily subjects to disturbances. Also, the micro-grids can become the incubators of smart grid technologies, because they comprise almost all of the components of a larger grid. This paper is an overview of storage systems, and a review of micro-grids and the latest smart technologies.