Storage-Supported Renewable Power Systems and Energy Independence of Countries: A Bibliometric Analysis of the Current State of the Art and Future Perspectives

The increasing deployment of renewable energy sources and energy storage technologies has stimulated growing interest in their contribution to energy security and energy independence. This study examines the structure, conceptual organization, and evolution of the emerging research domain linking renewable energy, energy storage, energy security, and energy independence. This domain is referred to here as Renewables-Storage-Security at the Country Level (RSSC). A bibliometric analysis of 468 Scopus-indexed publications was conducted using performance analysis, keyword co-occurrence analysis, overlay visualization, thematic evolution analysis, and thematic mapping. The results indicate that the RSSC analytical domain has evolved from a predominantly techno-economic focus on renewable energy and energy storage integration toward broader system-oriented themes related to energy transition, energy security, resilience, long-duration storage, hydrogen technologies, Power-to-X, and energy planning. Within the analyzed Scopus-indexed corpus, concepts such as energy security, energy independence, resilience, and energy self-sufficiency exhibited differentiated network positions and thematic associations. Energy independence was weakly represented as a standalone keyword theme and was more often associated with broader themes of energy-system transformation. This study contributes to a better understanding of the evolving role of storage-supported renewable power systems in contemporary energy-security research.