Assessment of energy storage technologies on life cycle sustainability for peak shaving scenario

Energy storage technology plays an important role in grid balancing, particularly for peak shaving and load shifting, due to the increasing penetration of renewable energy sources such as solar energy and their inherent intermittency and unpredictability. A life cycle sustainability assessment of typical energy storage technologies was performed in the present work, from the aspects of the technical, economic, environmental and social categories. A combined approach of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle cost (LCC), and the technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS), was developed. Four alternatives were investigated, including pumped hydro storage (PHS), compressed air energy storage (CAES), lithium iron phosphate battery (LIPB) and vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB). The sustainability scores indicated that PHS and LIPB were recommended as suitable options, scoring 0.73 and 0.49, respectively, on the basis of the highest weight of the technical criteria determined through the combination of the AHP and the entropy weight method (EWM). Moreover, a sensitivity analysis was carried out regarding the environmental impacts, economic performance and sustainability rankings. The results indicated that the round-trip efficiency significantly influenced the environmental performance, whereas the economic performance was sensitive to the discharge depth and the cycle frequency. Finally, the sustainability rankings were strongly dependent on the weights of criteria, underscoring the importance of real-world applications and decision-makers’ preferences.