Different energy systems have different electrical characteristics and preferred potentials at which energy will be delivered. In contrast, consumer appliances all expect to be supplied power of a certain type, e.g. 120 V AC at 60 Hz in North America. Thus one of the most important steps in the process of utilizing distributed generation technologies is to integrate all components into a single system which will produce output power at the consumer level.

Integration for a single home
There are three basic ways of achieving integration on a single home scale. Which one to use depends on various parameters such as system cost, reliability of available power and availability of grid energy.

1. Convert renewable energy directly to AC power

In this case excess energy is lost and no energy is supplied to the consumer when no renewable energy is available. This approach can be improved upon by adding a storage component to balance between times of excess energy and insufficient energy supply.
2. Pure grid-tie
Another way to achieve stable power supply while using renewable resources is with a pure grid-tie system. This is based on the idea that the power generated locally will preferentially be used locally even if it is allowed to flow onto the local grid. Thus it is possible to connect the renewable energy source to the grid on one circuit and connect the consumer load on a nearby circuit. The benefit of this solution is that it does not require expensive energy storage. At the same time the downside is that there is no backup capability in this system.

3. Renewable energy supply with grid backup and/or grid-tie
In this case the inverter used to control the renewable power source and the battery storage is also connected to the grid. The most common use of this setup is to use the power from the renewable source when available and satisfy the remaining power demand from the grid. If the grid fails and no renewable power is available stored energy from the batteries can be used. This is the preferred system when the amount of energy available from renewable sources will generally not meet demand but stable power supply is required.

Depending on the type of inverter used and the policies of the local utility, it may be possible to combine the backup capabilities of the system with the benefits of a grid-tie setup and sell excess energy back to the power grid to reduce effective cost of energy.

Integration for power plant or community use
When integration or renewable energies needs to be achieved at a small community scale, the type of electrical power found to be most convenient for energy storage and transport may vary from that used in residential power transmission. However, the basic setup does not change significantly. Illustrated on the example of a wind-hydrogen storage system, energy produced is preferentially used directly. If supply does not match demand the difference is stored or retrieved from the storage system. Finally, any difference remaining between demand and supply is satisfied via the grid, i.e. excess energy is moved to the grid for other consumers and energy shortfall is satisfied from other sources on the grid.