Towards robust and scalable dispatch modeling of long-duration energy storage

Energy storage technologies, including short-duration, long-duration, and seasonal storage, are seen as technologies that can facilitate the integration of larger shares of variable renewable energy, such as wind and solar photovoltaics, in power systems. However, despite recent advances in the techno-economic modeling of energy storage (particularly for short-duration applications), the operation and economics of long-duration energy storage are still incomplete in power systems modeling platforms. For instance, existing modeling approaches for long-duration storage are often based either on an oversimplified representation of power system operations or limited representation of storage technologies, e.g., evaluation of only a single application. This manuscript presents an overview of the challenges of modeling long-duration energy storage technologies in power system operations, as well as a discussion regarding the capabilities and limitations of existing approaches. Here two test power systems with high shares of both solar photovoltaics- and wind (70 %–90 % annual variable renewable energy shares) are used to assess long-duration energy storage dispatch approaches. Our results estimate that better dispatch modeling of long-duration energy storage could increase the associated operational value by 4 %–14 % and increase the standard capacity credit by 14 %–34 %. Thus, a better long-duration energy storage dispatch could represent significant cost saving opportunities for electric utilities and system operators. In addition, existing long-duration dispatch modeling approaches were tested in terms of both improved system value (e.g., based on production cost and standard capacity credit) and scalability (e.g., based on central processing unit time and peak memory usage). Both copper plate and nodal representations of the power system were considered. Although the end volume target dispatch approach, i.e., based on mid-term scheduling, showed promising performance in terms of both improved system value and scalability, there is a need for robust and scalable dispatch approaches for long-duration energy storage in transmission-constrained electric grids. Moreover, more research is required to better understand the optimal operation of long-duration storage considering extreme climate/weather events, reliability applications, and power system operational uncertainties.