Status: Published
**Citation:**Bistline, Cole, Damato, DeCarolis, Frazier, Linga, Marcy, Namovicz, Podkaminer, Sims, Sukunta, and Young. 2020. “Energy Storage in Long-Term System Models: A Review of Considerations, Best Practices, and Research Needs.” Progress in Energy 2(3):032001.
Interest in energy storage has grown as technological change has lowered costs and as expectations have grown for its role in power systems. These developments have created a need to enhance representations of energy storage in long-term power sector models to inform decision-making. Energy storage technologies have complex and diverse cost, value, and performance attributes that make them challenging to model relative to other technologies. However, there is currently little guidance about best practices and research gaps for energy storage analysis. This paper reviews the literature 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. This work also provides guidance to consumers of model outputs on proper use and interpretation based on model strengths and limitations.
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). These considerations require model detail like high spatiotemporal resolutions and endogenous investments that integrated assessment models and price-taker frameworks do not typically resolve. 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.
Link to Journal Article: Progress in Energy.