Life-Cycle Economic Evaluation of Batteries for Electeochemical Energy Storage Systems

Batteries are considered as an attractive candidate for grid-scale energy storage systems (ESSs) application due to their scalability and versatility of frequency integration, and peak/capacity adjustment. Since adding ESSs in power grid will increase the cost, the issue of economy, that whether the benefits from peak cutting and valley filling can compensate for the cost input of adding energy storage system or not, is particularly concerned. Here we show how the cost of battery deployment can potentially be minimized by carrying out an economic assessment for the cases of different batteries applied in ESSs. To make this analysis, we develop a techno-economic model and apply it to the cases of ESSs with batteries in applications. Our results show that batteries could be attractive for investors even now if appropriate batteries are selected for ESSs applications. Valve regulated lead acid batteries has a lower cost of initial investment, which is suitable for the situations that are sensitive to the initial investment cost. Lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4, LFP) battery can be applied in the situations with a high requirement for service life. While zinc-air batteries still have great application prospects to cope with resource depletion due to excellent performance, low cost and low pollution. The current policy debate should therefore be refocused so as to promote technological development and to encompass the removal of such barriers.