ABSTRACT
Energy plays a very significant role in the development of human society. Currently, the critical issues induced by the excessive usage of fossil fuels have become more and more noticeable, like energy crisis and air pollution. Therefore, the development and utilization of renewable energy resources have been inevitable for further sustainable development. However, the natural intermittency, uncontrollability, and instability of renewable energy resources make it difficult to connect and dispatch through the grid. Therefore, large-scale energy storage technologies become vital for the development and utilization of renewable energies. Large-scale energy storage technologies mainly contain both physical energy storage technologies (e.g., hydro-pumping, compressed-air, fly wheel, superconductor, and super-capacity), and chemical energy storage technologies (e.g., flow batteries, sodium-sulfur batteries, lithium-ion batteries, and lead batteries). This chapter briefly illustrates the requirement for large-scale energy storage, and the advantages and disadvantages of different large-scale energy storage technologies. The research development status of these technologies will also be discussed in detail.
