Abstract:

The application and development of energy storage technologies has gotten an increased attention as an essential device of future power system that use large amount of variable renewable resources. Energy storage enables to smooth the variation and uncertainty. In this paper, the existing energy storage technologies
are evaluated. The technologies for large scale electricity storage, such as pumped hydro, compressed air energy storage, sodium sulfur battery, lithium battery, lead acid battery and flow battery are analyzed in detail. The success of these applications of energy storage will depend on the cost and the performance. It is believed that reducing the cost, improving the durability and reliability and assisting with incentive policies are the key issues to achieve the commercialization of energy storage.

Key words: pumped hydro, compressed air energy storage, sodium sulfur battery, lithium battery, flow battery