While pumped hydro plants still account for around 96% of installed capacity of stationary energy storage worldwide, there will be more than 28GW of lithium batteries deployed for stationary storage applications by the year 2028, Navigant Research has predicted.

While lithium-ion batteries get most of the headlines, long-duration solutions of various types are gaining ground. Alice Grundy and Andy Colthorpe profile some of the established and emerging concepts in this increasingly important field.

Electrical and heat storage using specially nanocoated salt (NCS) could be economically competitive with pumped hydro, SaltX has said, with a large-scale demonstration facility inaugurated in Berlin, Germany.

The development of systems capable of storing over six hours of energy economically is being supported in New York with an Innovation Challenge launched by the New York Power Authority (NYPA) and Urban Future Lab, a cleantech innovation centre.

Liquid air energy storage (LAES), so far only deployed at scale at two sites in England, will be available in a number of new territories after manufacturer Highview Power signed a deal claimed to be worth €1 billion (US$1.12 billion).

Snap poll to decide whether goal to add 3.5GW in pumped storage capacity and 2.5GW in batteries in little longer than a decade becomes hard law.

China’s State Grid Corporation will build 6GW of pumped hydro storage as part of ongoing efforts to cut rates of wind and solar power curtailment.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has announced that it will provide assistance to “techno-economic” studies for two pumped storage hydropower plants, with a combined generation capacity close to 2GW.

In order to address intermittency in its grid, the South Australian Government has introduced a AU$50 million (US$36 million) Grid Scale Storage Fund (GSSF) to help accelerate the deployment of new large energy storage projects, including pumped hydro, hydrogen, gas storage, solar thermal, bioenergy and battery storage.

Minister for Energy Dr Megan Woods attended an event to officially inaugurate the first grid-scale battery energy storage system in New Zealand, hosted by energy retailer and project owner Mercury Energy.