The Reality of Large-Scale Storage Solutions in Today’s and Tomorrow’s Future European Energy System

摘要

The increasing share of intermittent renewable energy is creating stresses on the grid in many geographical areas, thereby increasing the need to maintain a sufficient amount of baseload and balancing capacity to compensate renewable production fluctuations. For example, a large amount of wind power might require gas plants to rotate at very low load (non-optimal point, high emission level) and to frequently operate in transient modes (non-optimal efficiency, reduction of life of the plant) to enable rapid compensation of wind power loss. The question around large-scale energy storage is therefore central in the shaping of the future power generation landscape. The paper proposes to look at past and recent technology developments and to assess the reality of large-scale energy storage in the current market.