LAUSR

Abstract The choice of the energy storage technology involves multiple criteria that need to be simultaneously considered in the energy planning process. The development of sustainable energy system requires to take into account not only technical characteristics of storage technologies but also to pursue sustainability issues. The paper aims to perform not-site-specific sustainability assessment of the main types of energy storage technologies (mechanical, chemical, electrochemical and thermal) based on the developed advanced multi-criteria technique. The paper follows the vein of the coordinated Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and extends it to the interval environment. A geometric integer programming model is introduced to identify the interval for the degree of coordination. The proposed method is, therefore, able to handle uncertainty and coordinate performance of the alternatives with respect to multiple criteria. Sustainability assessment of energy storage technologies is performed based on the most important technological, economic, environmental and social criteria. The results showed that the most sustainable energy storage technologies are mechanical and thermal ones (utility scores range in between 1 and 0.75). The remaining technologies exhibit utility scores of 0.69 at most. The least appealing options are electrochemical storage technologies.