Modeling Costs and Benefits of Energy Storage Systems

Abstract

In recent years, analytical tools and approaches to model the costs and benefits of energy storage have proliferated in parallel with the rapid growth in the energy storage market. Some analytical tools focus on the technologies themselves, with methods for projecting future energy storage technology costs and different cost metrics used to compare storage system designs. Other tools focus on the integration of storage into larger energy systems, including how to economically operate energy storage, estimate the air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions effects of storage, or understand how policy and market rules influence storage deployment and operation. Given the confluence of evolving technologies, policies, and systems, we highlight some key challenges for future energy storage models, including the use of imperfect information to make dispatch decisions for energy-limited storage technologies and estimating how different market structures will impact the deployment of additional energy storage.