Economics of stationary electricity storage with various charge and discharge durations

Résumé

Electricity storage encompasses a disparate list of technologies such as pumped-storage hydroelectricity, compressed-air energy storage, chemical batteries, and flywheels. These technologies can provide the electricity system with heterogeneous services of energy transfers across months, weeks, days or intra-days, power transfers for an hour, a few minutes or seconds, and can assist operators in load following, frequency control, and uninterrupted power supply. The paper presents a unified economic analysis of these technologies and services. We underline the role of charge and discharge durations as a criterion for economic segmentation of technologies and services. We highlight the complementary value of storage in electricity systems with a high share of low variable cost and low carbon generation (nuclear, hydro, wind power, solar photovoltaic). We also underline the limited substitution value of storage for generation with high variable cost (gas combustion-turbines or gas-oil motor engines), given the cost of state-of-the-art storage technologies and the current relatively low cost of fossil fuels and low carbon pricing.