Publication date: July 2012
This report looks at the future role of energy storage in the UK
and analyses the potential of electricity storage to reduce the
costs of electricity generation in our future
energy system.
The UK government's commitment to reducing greenhouse gas
emissions by 80% by 2050 poses many challenges. Integrating
significant levels of variable renewable generation and increasing
levels of electrified demand, for example, will require greater
degrees of flexibility in UK's electricity network in order to
maintain supply-demand balance as we do today. While many
recognize that energy storage has an important role to play in
providing this system flexibility, the challenge has been to move
the industry beyond a fairly conceptual debate.
In order to provide a useful framework and an initial
quantitative fact base to stimulate the debate, the Carbon Trust
commissioned this study in 2011 to address some of the key
questions in relation to the future role of electricity storage in
the UK.
- What are the benefits of storage across different time scales
and different sectors of the system (from real time operation to
investment time scale, considering generation, transmission and
distribution sectors)?
- What type of storage delivers the highest value and where
should it be placed on the network?
- What are the cost targets and scale of deployment?
This report, by the Energy Futures Lab at Imperial College,
summarises the key findings of the study.
Download
Energy Storage Systems report (PDF)