Renewable energy storage benefits and economic impacts

الملخص

Algeria as other oil and gas producing countries, is facing for the last six months the downward trends of the oil and gas prices. In addition, the alarming global climate changes are calling for a wise use of the remaining natural resources and thoughtful measures to reduce the environmental footprint of human activity. The positive consequence is the push on getting renewable energy technologies to accelerate their potential to substitute conventional processes in the production of electricity. Solar and wind resources and technologies are well positioned to increasingly replace fossil fuel as the main source of energy. Advances in the field brought these energy generation technologies to a level of becoming an alternative source that is economically viable and technically reliable. The benefits and the economic potential of energy storage as well as the different energy storage technologies are presented in this contribution. The global market insights and trends reveal that electrical energy storage will in the coming five years win the economic argument and catalyze large PV generation deployment worldwide. Algeria is gifted with worldwide most significant solar insulation resources, which constitutes a great potential for energy production through PV and CPS plants. The energetic potential overpasses by far the country’s needs, thus rendering the deployment and exploitation of storage capabilities key to exploit to its fullest the resources at both ends and throughout the new electrical energy value chain, including generation, distribution/transport and consumption.