In the 1970s, advanced countries' aggressive industrialization led to rapid growth in energy demand, but the oil crisis prompted some countries to begin installing grid-scale energy storage systems. 1980s and 1990s, with the stabilization of oil prices and slowing of electricity demand, energy storage systems were mainly used to regulate the excess power at night.

The liberalization of the electricity sector in 2000 led to the development of the electricity trading market. In countries with time-of-use tariffs, new energy storage systems are mainly used to store off-peak, low-priced electricity, which is then sold at a higher price to generate revenue. Energy storage systems were also widely used for frequency regulation at the transmission and distribution end of the spectrum. 2010 saw a global trend toward energy conservation and carbon reduction, with more and more countries introducing incentives for renewable energy generation, whose intermittent and unstable nature has impacted the security of power supply, and in turn has led to a steady growth in demand for energy storage.