A comparison of STORES with other energy storage technologies and gas and biomass generation.
Report extract
There are currently two leading candidates for short to medium term (hours to days) energy storage being deployed in Australia – batteries and pumped hydro storage. Other candidates, that are not currently deployed in Australia beyond pilot scale, are concentrated solar thermal power (CSP) with thermal storage and open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs) using renewable fuels.
The technologies are often compared on the basis of a single cost per kWh for the entire storage. However, this is misleading, and the reality is more complex. There are two primary components to an energy storage system – those associated with delivery of power (units Watts) and those associated with the storage of electrical energy (Watt-hours).
Examples of the contributors to the power component are the inverters for batteries that convert the DC storage to AC power; and the pumps, turbine, penstocks/tunnel in a pumped hydro system.
For the energy storage component, the costs are the Li-ion cells in a Li-ion battery or the water reservoirs in a PHES system.