The capacity of distributed photovoltaic impacts the safe and reliable operation of the distribution feeders. The energy storage is one solution for addressing that challenge. To balance the financial viability of investing in the energy storage projects in distribution feeders with grid reliability, an optimal planning method for energy storage considering economy and reliability is proposed. First, an economic model is established. Second, a grid reliability simulation is performed based on the economic optimization results of energy storage capacity in distribution feeders. Finally, considering the comprehensive indexes of economy and reliability, the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution method is used, and the final scheme is determined by the cumulative distribution curve. The simulation results show that it can effectively improve the distributed photovoltaic consumption capacity of the distribution feeders and better balance the financial viability of investing in energy storage considering reliability, which can be used as a reference for the reasonable determination of ratios of the energy storage for renewables.