Sustainability Assessment of Typical Energy Storage Technologies for Peak Shaving Scenarios Based on the Full Life Cycle

With more renewable energy sources (RES) which are inherent intermittent and unpredictable connecting with power grid, various stability problems occur, among which the peak load regulation is the most prominent. Energy storage systems (ESSs) are essential for buffering the electricity grid. Selecting the most suitable energy storage technology among various alternatives is of great importance. In this work, the sustainability of typical energy storage technologies was studied with respect to four aspects for peak shaving scenarios, including technical (i.e. maturity, energy density, round-trip efficiency, duration ranges, life cycles, lifetime and position flexibility), economic (levelized cost of energy, net present value), environmental (i.e. global warming, damage to human health, damage to ecosystems, damage to resource availability) and social (public acceptance) based on the full life cycle. This study evaluated the soft criteria including maturity, position flexibility and public acceptance by Analytic hierarchy process (AHP). Life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost (LCC) methods were combined to study the life-cycle environmental and economic performance. Technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS) was applied for determining the sustainability prioritization of energy storage technologies. The sensitivity analysis was carried out to investigate the effects of control and economic input parameters on environmental performance and economic performance. In addition, the effects of criteria weights, electricity sources and number of daily cycles were conducted on sustainability ranking of ESSs. The results showed Lithium iron phosphate battery (LIPB) and pumped hydro storage (PHS) had good sustainability performance, which could be the most suitable energy storage technologies for peak shaving scenarios.