Limited fossil energy resources and the prospect of impending climate change have led the European Union to engage in a restructuring of the electricity sector towards a sustainable, economical and reliable power supply. Energy storage systems have the potential of an enabling technology for the integration of renewable energy sources, which underlies this transition. They allow the delivery of energy produced by a local source to the electric grid to be shifted in time and can compensate random fluctuations in power output. Through such smoothing and levelling, energy storage systems can make the production of variable renewable sources predictable and amenable to control.In order to observe scheduled production and their commitments towar...