Overview of current and future energy storage technologies for electric power applications

In today's world, there is a continuous global need for more energy which, at the same time, has to be cleaner than the energy produced from the traditional generation technologies. This need has facilitated the increasing penetration of distributed generation (DG) technologies and primarily of renewable energy sources (RES). The extensive use of such energy sources in today's electricity networks can indisputably minimize the threat of global warming and climate change. However, the power output of these energy sources is not as reliable and as easy to adjust to changing demand cycles as the output from the traditional power sources. This disadvantage can only be effectively overcome by the storing of the excess power produced by DC-RES. Therefore, in order for these new sources to become completely reliable as primary sources of energy, energy storage is a crucial factor. In this work, an overview of the current and future energy storage technologies used for electric power applications is carried out. Most of the technologies are in use today while others are still under intensive research and development. A comparison between the various technologies is presented in terms of the most important technological characteristics of each technology. The comparison shows that each storage technology is different in terms of its ideal network application environment and energy storage scale. This means that in order to achieve optimum results, the unique network environment and the specifications of the storage device have to be studied thoroughly, before a decision for the ideal storage technology to be selected is taken. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.