Zhe Chai’s research while affiliated with State Grid Energy Research Institute and other places

As the Chinese government proposes ambitious plans to promote low-carbon transition, energy storage will play a pivotal role in China’s future power system. However, due to the lack of a mature electricity market environment and corresponding mechanisms, current energy storage in China faces problems such as unclear operational models, insufficient cost recovery mechanisms, and a single investment entity, making it difficult to support the rapid development of the energy storage industry. In contrast, European and American countries have already embarked on certain practices in energy storage operation models. Through exploration of key issues such as investment entities, market participation forms, and cost recovery channels in both front and back markets, a wealth of mature experiences has been accumulated. Therefore, this paper first summarizes the existing practices of energy storage operation models in North America, Europe, and Australia’s electricity markets separately from front and back markets, finding that perfect market mechanisms and reasonable subsidy policies are among the main drivers for promoting the rapid development of energy storage markets. Subsequently, combined with the actual development of China’s electricity market, it explores three key issues affecting the construction of cost-sharing mechanisms for energy storage under market conditions: Market participation forms, investment and operation modes, and cost recovery mechanisms. Finally, in line with the development expectations of China’s future electricity market, suggestions are proposed from four aspects: Market environment construction, electricity price formation mechanism, cost sharing path, and policy subsidy mechanism, to promote the healthy and rapid development of China’s energy storage industry.

With the advancement of distributed power generation technology and the deepening of the low-carbon transformation of energy structure, a high proportion of renewable energy has become an inevitable trend in future energy systems, especially for microgrids. However, the volatility and uncertainty associated with renewable energy pose significant challenges to the secure and stable operation of power systems, necessitating the exploration of the flexible regulation of resources. Energy storage, as a crucial flexible resource characterized by technological diversity and a variety of regulation capabilities, has been extensively studied and applied. Nonetheless, the high investment costs and limited returns of energy storage technology, coupled with the ambiguous utility in different scenarios under the current electricity market’s framework, complicate its broader application. To thoroughly analyze the utility of energy storage in facilitating flexible adjustments in microgrids, this study developed a composite weight-TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese for interactive and multi-criteria decision making) model for assessing the utility of energy storage that incorporates heterogeneity in the risk preferences. This model enabled a comparative analysis of the utility of energy storage technology across multiple scenarios, taking the risk preferences of decision-makers into account, thereby providing strategic insights for the application of multi-temporal energy storage in microgrids. The feasibility and effectiveness of the model were validated through a case study analysis.

In view of the current situation of the global energy crisis and environmental pollution, the energy industry transition and environmental governance are urgently needed. To deal with the problem above, the construction of a power system dominated by renewable energy (PSDRE) with wind turbine (WT), photovoltaic (PV), biomass power (BP), and other clean, low-carbon, renewable energy sources as the principal part has become a consensus all over the world. However, the random and uncertain power output of renewable energy will not only put pressure on the power system but also lead to the unreasonable and insufficient usage of renewable energy. In this context, the energy storage (ES) effects of flexible resources, such as physical energy storage of batteries and demand response (DR), are analyzed first. Next, a modeling method for the operational characteristics of physical and virtual shared energy storage (PVSES) in regional PSDRE (RPSDRE) is proposed. Finally, an optimal scheduling strategy for RPSDRE that considers PVSES is proposed to achieve coordination of WT, PV, PVSES, and other flexible resources. The case study on RPSDRE in Lankao county, Kaifeng city, Henan province of China verifies the effectiveness and practicability of the proposed strategy.