This paper reviews the most important energy storage systems for applications in residential environments. Normally, these systems are associated with renewable energy in order to achieve specific characteristics, although new possibilities and challenges are implemented over them in any residential places. Nowadays, the development of such kind of energy systems represents a technical challenge in the market. In residential and small building applications, energy storage solutions supply the demanded power by consumers of residential areas or small stand-alone buildings placed on isolated zones. In context of smart grids, energy storage management systems are not only concerned about energy storage, also inefficiency optimization and power consume. This work presents INTELEM, a new smart storage architecture which integrates the energy storage and the intelligent energy management in communities and in residential applications.