Energy storage power stations are difficult to recover costs

Energy storage power stations are capital-intensive systems, with high construction costs and long payback periods. Large-scale, long-term energy storage projects are not attractive to most social enterprises and investors.

Governments and authoritative institutions can provide differentiated capacity compensation based on the available capacity of energy storage stations and related cost estimates. This will help energy storage stations expand their profit channels and recover fixed costs as much as possible in the early stages.

The time-of-use electricity price in the domestic market is often determined by the power grid, and the price difference between peak and valley hours is not large. Energy storage cannot fully recover its own value by arbitrage income in the electric energy market.

In general, they have not been widely used in electricity networks because their cost is considerably high and their profit margin is low. However, climate concerns, carbon reduction effects, increase in renewable energy use, and energy security put pressure on adopting the storage concepts and facilities as complementary to renewables.

For large-scale energy storage facilities represented by pumped-storage power stations, due to their high investment costs and the ability to exert a large-scale regulation effect, they are mostly invested and operated independently by grid operators, participating in market transactions in a centralized manner.

Energy storage has the potential to play a crucial role in the future of the power sector. However, significant research and development efforts are needed to improve storage technologies, reduce costs, and increase efficiency.