Application of energy storage in integrated energy systems — A solution to fluctuation and uncertainty of renewable energy

Given the urgency of climate change mitigation, it is crucial to increase the practical utilization of renewable energy. However, high uncertainty and large fluctuation of variable renewable energy create enormous challenges to increasing the penetration of renewable energy. Various energy storage technologies have been applied to renewable energy to handle the fluctuation and uncertainty problem. To enrich the knowledge about the effects of energy storage technologies, this paper performs a comprehensive overview of the applications of various energy storage technologies and evaluates their capabilities of mitigating the fluctuation and uncertainty of renewable energy. The main techno-economic characteristics of the energy storage technologies, including: super-conducting magnetic energy storage, flywheel energy storage, redox flow batteries, compressed air energy storage, pump hydro storage and lithium-ion batteries, are analyzed. Moreover, supercapacitor storage, sodium‑sulfur batteries, lead-acid batteries and nickel‑cadmium batteries are also discussed in this study.