Energy storage systems: Comparisons, environmental impacts, selection criteria, and bibliometric analysis for large-scale applications

• A comprehensive review on energy storage systems is presented. • Different ESSs have been critically discussed. • Selection criteria required for choosing the suitable ESS are discussed. Due to the severe environmental impact of fossil fuels, price variation, and limited availability of resources, renewable energy sources are recognized as the optimal option to overcome such issues. However, due to their inherent intermittent power generation nature, ESSs “energy storage systems” have been introduced to enable the efficient employment of such resources. In this paper, various ESSs are discussed in detail in terms of their operating principles, maturity levels, policies, advantages, and disadvantages, as well as the associated environmental impacts. Furthermore, the selection criteria required for choosing the suitable ESS are examined, including technical, economic, environmental, and social aspects. In addition, a bibliometric analysis is conducted to investigate the progress in the field of large-scale ESSs, highlighting research trends, hotspots, keyword occurrences, and countries' contributions. Results show that there is a continuous growth in this domain, reaching 2522 publications in 2024, while the most occurring keyword related to ESS devices is sodium-ion batteries, followed by thermal energy storage and supercapacitors.