Energy Storage Considerations: Applications, Issues and Solutions

India has set itself a renewable energy (RE) target of 175 GW and 450 GW for 2022 and 2030, respectively. With the country bracing up to meet these targets, and given the intermittent nature of RE, energy storage systems (ESSs) are required to balance the grid.

The most commonly used storage technologies in the Indian grid are pumped-hydro (~96% of the total storage installed) and battery storages. Other storage technologies that can be used are compressed air, flywheels, hydrogen storage, supercapacitors, superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES), and thermal energy storage (which includes water heaters, ice storage, chilled water storage, and molten salt-based storage).