Energy storage has been hailed as the missing link and even an essential ingredient to higher levels of wind and solar power, but anew paper from Argonne National Laboratory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology questions that premise.
The authors of the report, “The value of energy storage in decarbonizing the electricity sector,” conclude that the value of shorter-duration storage technologies, up to about two hours, is only justified by generation cost savings under the most stringent carbon emissions limits, and even then, only at low storage penetration levels. Hence, continued innovation and cost declines for lithium-ion batteries and other electrochemical energy storage technologies will be necessary to economically justify large-scale deployment in future low-carbon power systems.
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