Energy Storage in Long-Term System Models: A Review of Considerations, Best Practices, and Research Needs

Energy storage technologies have complex and diverse cost, value, and performance characteristics that make them challenging to model, but there is limited guidance about best practices and research gaps for energy storage analysis. This paper reviews the literature and draws upon our collective experience to provide recommendations to analysts on approaches for representing energy storage in long-term electric sector models, navigating tradeoffs in model development, and identifying research gaps for existing tools and data. In particular, this review demonstrates the importance of capturing how the values of energy storage and other resources change as the system composition changes (e.g. with different levels of storage, renewables deployment, and emissions outcomes). Research gaps include linking tools of different resolutions, developing reduced-form representations of value streams, incorporating hybrid energy storage and renewable systems, and representing longer-duration energy storage technologies.

Journal Article