Storage Devices includes all of electrical, pressure, gravitational, flywheel, and heat storage technologies. While the microgrid concept focuses on a power system, heat storage can be relevant to its operation whenever its existence affects operation of the microgrid. For example, the availability of heat storage will alter the desirable operating schedule of a CHP system as the electrical and heat loads are decoupled. Similarly, the pre-cooling or heating of buildings will alter the load shape of heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system, and therefore the requirement faced by electricity supply resources.

Controlled loads, such as automatically dimmable lighting or delayed pumping, are particularly important to microgrids simply by virtue of their scale. Inevitably in small power systems, load variability will be more extreme than in utility-scale systems. The corollary is that load control can make a particularly valuable contribution to a microgrid.