The capacity of energy storage systems being deployed in the US will roughly triple this year (2018) on the back of rapidly falling costs and state- and local-level support, according to a new report released by GTM Research and the Energy Storage Association trade organization.
So, to put that in simpler terms, the report predicts that: the US energy storage market will increase ~200% this year. This growth, and also overall total deployments, will be split amongst commercial installations, utility-scale installations, and home/household installations.
To be more specific, the report predicts that growth will total around 186% — up to 1,233 megawatt-hours (MWh) worth of new energy storage installation capacity. This compares to a growth-rate of “just” 27% in 2017 — relating to 431 MWh worth of new energy storage installation capacity.
“Front-of-the-meter deployments accounted for the largest share of the market in 2017, but it was the behind-the-market market that showed the most progress in 2017, increasing by 79% year-over-year with record deployments in both the residential and non-residential segments,” CleanTechnica writes.
This is largely because new home energy storage system costs have been plummeting in recent years — partly due to a large increase in the number and quality of offerings out there on the consumer market.
It should be noted here that if battery supply constraint problems weren’t an issue that growth would likely be a fair bit higher than it is — as you may recall, the wait time for new Tesla Powerwall systems is now pretty long, and the same is true of the offerings of many other companies as well.
Reuters adds: “Storage system costs have fallen by roughly two thirds in the last five years, Manghani said. In addition, more states are mandating utilities procure storage systems. The market for energy storage is still small, generating just $300 million in value last year, the report said. But batteries have long held the promise of solving the intermittent nature of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, so their development is closely watched by investors, regulators and power companies.”
With that in mind, the report predicts that the market will total more than $1 billion a year in 2019 — with strong growth expected for the foreseeable future.
