Combined economic and technological evaluation of battery energy storage for grid applications

Batteries will play critical roles in modernizing energy grids, as they will allow a greater penetration of renewable energy and perform applications that better match supply with demand. Applying storage technology is a business decision that requires potential revenues to be accurately estimated to determine the economic viability, which requires models that consider market rules and prices, along with battery and application-specific constraints. Here we use models of storage connected to the California energy grid and show how the application-governed duty cycles (power profiles) of different applications affect different battery chemistries. We reveal critical trade-offs between battery chemistries and the applicability of energy content in the battery and show that accurate revenue measurement can only be achieved if a realistic battery operation in each application is considered. The findings in this work could call for a paradigm shift in how the true economic values of energy storage devices could be assessed. Large variations exist in the revenue prediction of grid-scale storage due to uncertainties in operations of storage technologies. Here the authors integrate the economic evaluation of energy storage with key battery parameters for a realistic measure of revenues.