Renewable energy has proven itself to be an essential source of power for years to come, but the issue of consistently delivering power all day remains. This is where energy storage comes into play, for it allows renewable energy plants to deliver energy without large variation in output due to sunlight or wind speed changes. Energy storage systems come in various configurations but at the core consist of a battery, battery management system, systems controller and sometimes an integrated inverter/converter. To increase the battery lifetime and runtime, active or passive cell balancing may be used to equalize the state of charge between cells. Systems developed for either utility or consumer level applications both require enhanced communications, whether they are used by a grid manager balancing loads or a consumer monitoring their own storage and utilization. The advent of standards and specifications for different markets and the need for increased safety requires robust monitoring and protection as well. These and many other various aspects of energy storage devices can be covered by TI’s vast portfolio, including: Integrated system controller and communications gateway Robust battery monitoring and protection with redundancies Reference designs for quick implementation of active or passive cell balancing