Battery Energy Storage Technology Principle
Energy storage technology refers to a series of related technologies that achieve the storage and release of electricity through physical or chemical methods. Generally speaking, it can be classified into mechanical energy storage, electromagnetic energy storage, and electrochemical energy storage according to the different ways of storing energy. Mechanical energy storage can be further divided into pumped hydro, compressed air energy storage, and flywheel energy storage. Electromagnetic energy storage mainly includes superconducting magnetic energy storage and supercapacitor energy storage. Electrochemical energy storage involves storing and releasing electricity in the form of chemical energy. Currently, electrochemical energy storage mainly uses batteries and electrochemical capacitors for energy storage, and commonly used batteries include lead-acid battery, lead-carbon battery, sodium-sulfur battery, flow battery, lithium-ion battery, and so on. Electrochemical energy storage technology, with its advantages of high efficiency, flexible application, and fast response speed, is gradually occupying an increasingly important place in the energy storage market.
Characteristics and Main Applications of Battery Energy Storage Technology
In order to promote the optimization and upgrading of the energy industry, achieve clean and low-carbon development, and vigorously develop clean energy in recent years, wind power and photovoltaics have achieved rapid development, and the proportion of new energy installed capacity has been increasing. However, while clean energy is developing rapidly, the grid faces unfavorable impacts from regulation and control of operation, safety, and other aspects due to fluctuating and intermittent new energy input. This greatly restricts the effective utilization of clean energy. Battery energy storage power stations can be applied jointly with distributed/centralized new energy generation, and is an effective way to solve the problem of new energy integration into the grid. It will become a major key technology to support the development strategy of clean energy as the scale of new energy generation increases and battery energy storage technology continues to develop.
As an important way of storing electricity, battery energy storage has the advantages of flexible configuration of power and energy according to different application needs, fast response speed, and no external conditions such as geographical resources restrictions. It is suitable for large-scale application and batch production, and has an irreplaceable position in coordinating centralized/distributed new energy access and power grid operation assistance.
Large-scale battery energy storage power stations can participate in grid frequency/pressure regulation, provide backup, peak shaving, and filling valley services as an independent power station on the power generation side. They can also cooperate with renewable energy generation to increase the volume of renewable energy input into the grid. On the transmission side, battery energy storage power can be used as an alternative solution to upgrade the transmission network and provide secondary frequency regulation services for the grid. On the distribution side, it can postpone the upgrading and renovation of the distribution network, improve the safety and economy of the distribution network operation, and improve the ability to accommodate distributed power sources. On the user side, it can participate in price arbitrage based on peak and off-peak price differentials, and participate in demand side response to obtain revenue.