For wind at least, it turns out you want to put the batteries as close to the wind turbines as possible, rather than close to the consumer. The reason is that this evens out the power delivery over the grid. If you put the batteries close to the consumer, the grid from the turbines to consumer must cope with peak generation capacity (powering peak demand, plus charging batteries), whereas if the batteries are close to the turbine the grid only needs to cope with peak wind demand (i.e generation capacity minus battery charging), which is considerably less. Source: from a conversation with someone in high in a major wind power generator.
This makes a lot of sense but would never have occurred to me.
What are the real-world consequences if you fail to "cope" with demand or generation - increased probability of systemic failure? Something blowing out?
