How does energy storage work?
Electricity demand oscillates throughout the year and across the day, usually peaking in the coldest and hottest months of the year and in the busiest hours of the day. By comparison, specific energy sources, such as wind, sun, and water, have their highest power generation potential when the weather conditions are favorable, not necessarily matching hours of peak electricity demand. Energy storage can provide flexibility to the electricity grid, guaranteeing more efficient use of resources. When supply is greater than demand, excess electricity can be fed into storage devices. It can in turn be tapped hours (or sometimes even days) later when demand is greater than supply.The global energy storage deployment is expected to grow steadily in the coming decade. In 2022, the annual growth rate of pumped storage hydropower capacity grazed 10 percent, while the cumulative capacity of battery power storage is forecast to surpass 500 gigawatts by 2045.
Types of energy storage technologies
There is a wide range of energy storage technologies available, but they can usually be divided into five major categories, depending on their working principle: mechanical, electrochemical, thermal, chemical, and electrical. Mechanical technologies, particularly pumped hydropower, have historically been the most widely used large-scale energy storage. In 2022, global pumped storage hydropower capacity surpassed 135 gigawatts, with China, Japan, and the United States combined accounting for almost one third of this value.Continuously declining prices should cause energy storage systems to gain considerable market share in the next 30 years. Their market size was forecast to surpass 1.3 trillion U.S. dollars by 2030, of which over one billion in pumped hydro technologies. In turn, the value of the battery storage market worldwide is forecast to reach roughly 18 billion U.S. dollars before 2030, a three-fold increase in comparison to the five billion U.S. dollars recorded in 2023.
