Classification of energy storage systems

This book aims at presenting thorough fundamental and technical information about energy storage technologies, with a certain focus on those suitable for large-scale and long-term electricity storage applications. Therefore, among all the different categories of energy storage systems, the book mainly covers chemical, thermal, and mechanical concepts. This chapter presents an introduction to energy storage systems and various categories of them, an argument on why we urgently need energy storage systems, and an explanation of what technologies (and why) the market as well as research and development projects are putting more stress on. Then, various technologies are briefly introduced to make readers well prepared to jump into the detailed technical and economic aspects of any of these technologies, which will be presented in the following chapters.