A review and probabilistic model of lifecycle costs of stationary batteries in multiple applications

In future electricity systems with a high share of intermittent renewable power generation, battery technologies have the potential to support power quality and security. The growing scientific literature on batteries reflects the high attention that currently rests on these technologies. This paper reviews the existing literature on lifecycle costs of batteries in stationary applications. The primary result of this review is that, despite the current high degree of variance in technological and economic battery data, a systematic assessment of the underlying uncertainty is lacking. The present paper addresses this disparity with an investigation of the impact of uncertainty in input parameters on lifecycle costs of four battery technologies across six electricity system applications. Based on input data collected from literature and via expert interviews, a probabilistic techno-economic model was built that calculates lifecycle costs and systematically addresses uncertainty in input parameters by applying a Monte Carlo simulation. The main conclusion of this paper is that the present uncertainty in cost and technical parameters of batteries exceeds by far the differences in lifecycle costs across technologies. For most electricity storage applications, the absolute differences in mean lifecycle costs across technologies are negligible compared to the uncertainty ranges of the mean lifecycle costs. Therefore, a competition still exists between the four analyzed battery technologies and so far a leading technology has yet to emerge in any of the investigated applications. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.