State-wise Economic Viability of Long-Duration Energy Storage Systems in the United States

TL;DR

This study assesses the economic viability of long-duration energy storage systems across U.S. states, highlighting that only a few states can support such systems without increasing overall system costs under current cost targets.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive state-wise analysis of the maximum cost thresholds for economically viable LDES systems in the U.S.

Findings

Only 4 states can remove firm conventional generation without increasing system costs.

States with high LDES viability costs tend to have high wind share and low thermal generation participation.

High thermal FO&M costs correlate with higher LDES viability costs.

Abstract

Long-duration energy storage (LDES) assets can be fundamental resources for the next-generation power systems. However, LDES technologies are still immature and their future technology costs remain highly uncertain. In this context, we perform in this paper an extensive study to estimate the maximum LDES technology costs (which we define as viability costs) under which LDES systems would be economically viable in each state of the contiguous U.S. according to their characteristics. Our results indicate that only 4 states (out of 48) would be able to remove firm conventional generation supported by LDES systems without increasing their total system costs under the current US-DOE cost target of 1,100 US$/kW for multi-day LDES. In addition, we find that states with the highest LDES viability costs have in general low participation of thermal generation, a high share of wind generation, and higher thermal-related fixed operation and maintenance (FO&M) costs.