Overview on recent developments in energy storage: Mechanical, electrochemical and hydrogen technologies

Highlights: • World energy demand is analyzed. • Promising energy storage systems are shown to explore their potentials. • Different storage are considered and compared. • The efficiency and costs of each are shown. • Easy guidelines for selection of energy storage are provided. - Abstract: Energy production is changing in the world because of the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to reduce the dependence on carbon/fossil sources and to introduce renewable energy sources. Despite the great amount of scientific efforts, great care to energy storage systems is necessary to overcome the discontinuity in the renewable production. A wide variety of options and complex characteristic matrices make it difficult and so in this paper the authors show a clear picture of the available state-of-the-art technologies. The paper provides an overview of mechanical, electrochemical and hydrogen technologies, explaining operation principles, performing technical and economic features. Finally a schematic comparison among the potential utilizations of energy storage systems is presented.