Flow-based analysis of storage usage in a low-carbon European electricity scenario

TL;DR

This paper applies flow tracing to analyze storage usage in a large-scale European electricity system aiming for 95% CO2 reduction, revealing distinct roles for hydrogen and battery storage and their local-global behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a flow-based analysis method for storage in interconnected power systems and applies it to a data-driven European model with significant decarbonization.

Findings

Hydrogen storage mainly used for wind energy.

Battery storage primarily receives solar power.

Storage acts as both local and global system flexibility.

Abstract

The application of the flow tracing method to power flows in and out of storage units allows to analyse the usage of this technology option in large-scale interconnected electricity systems. We apply this method to a data-driven model of the European electricity network, which uses a techno-economic optimisation to determine generation and storage capacities and dispatch, assuming a 95% reduction of CO2 emission compared to 1990 levels. A flow-based analysis of the power inflow into the different storage technologies confirms the intuition that longer-term hydrogen storage is mainly utilised for wind, whereas short-term battery storage mostly receives inflow from solar power generation. The usage of storage technologies in general shows a local-but-global behaviour: Whereas on average the power outflow from these capacities is predominantly consumed locally inside the same node, when exported it is also transmitted over long distances as a global flexibility option for the entire system.