Abstract
The rapid transition toward new-type power systems with high renewable energy penetration has created fundamental challenges for battery energy storage systems (BESS) in terms of multi-timescale flexibility provision, operational adaptability, and system-level value creation. However, existing reviews have primarily focused on battery materials, cell-level performance improvement, or individual technology comparisons, lacking a systematic framework that connects technological evolution with power system requirements. This review establishes a demand-oriented analytical framework integrating grid requirements, performance constraints, technology adaptation boundaries, and system-level coordinated deployment to reassess the evolution pathways and future roles of battery energy storage. Major battery technologies, including lithium-ion batteries, sodium-ion batteries, redox flow batteries, and emerging long-duration storage technologies, are comparatively evaluated from the perspectives of application scenarios, engineering maturity, degradation characteristics, safety challenges, and system integration potential. The review further identifies key scientific and engineering challenges restricting large-scale deployment, including the dynamic boundaries between power-oriented and energy-oriented applications, cross-scale coupling between battery degradation and grid operation, propagation mechanisms of safety risks, limitations of lifetime prediction under stochastic operating conditions, and coordinated operation between BESS and heterogeneous storage resources. The analysis reveals that the development trajectory of battery energy storage is shifting from device-level performance optimization toward system-level functionality enhancement, where flexibility, reliability, lifecycle economics, and grid compatibility are becoming the dominant evaluation criteria. Future research is expected to focus on cross-scale battery–grid modeling, physics-informed artificial intelligence for state awareness and lifetime prediction, intelligent safety management, and coordinated multi-storage optimization. By proposing a system-oriented theoretical framework, this review provides new insights into the transformation of battery energy storage from independent energy conversion devices into intelligent and controllable infrastructure supporting the flexibility, resilience, and sustainable evolution of future power systems.
