Energy storage systems from short to long-term applications. Performance and costs

The urgent need to transition to sustainable energy solutions, driven by increasing global energy consumption, is crucial for mitigating climate change and its environmental impacts. However, the intermittency of renewable energy sources heightens the demand for energy storage systems (ESSs). Selecting the appropriate technology remains challenging due to the vast variety of options and their differing characteristics. To address this, a three-level comparative framework (storage duration, power scale and discharge time) is developed in this study. Energy storage technologies (ESTs) are assigned based on key performance indicators (KPIs) to the branches defined by these categories. Each branch corresponds to a class of applications with specific duration, power and discharge requirements, enabling direct KPI comparisons across all technologies. This methodology is followed by detailed modeling of three ESTs: hydrogen energy storage (HES), lithium-ion batteries and liquid air energy storage (LAES) to yield a comprehensive understanding of their performance across diverse case scenarios. The comparative study shows that lithium-ion batteries excel in high-cycle, short-duration applications, followed by tower-based gravity energy storage (T-GES), which achieves the lowest levelized cost of storage (LCOS) at approximately 0.19 €/kWh for 12-h discharge time. Compressed air energy storage (CAES) and pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) are the most economical for multi‐hour discharges, across all storage durations, where geography permits, reaching LCOS values as low as ~0.13 €/kWh. For long-duration storage (Long-Term and Seasonal), HES remains the most suitable location-independent technology at high discharge times. Furthermore, the HES model demonstrates that, with four cycles per year, increasing the charging time to five times the discharge time can reduce the LCOS by 35% to 47%, with the exact reduction depending on the discharge duration. These insights provide a clear view of the strengths and weaknesses of each EST and serve as a starting point for detailed analyses of specific case scenarios.