After another record-breaking year, in which the US surpassed 1GW of deployed energy storage and China began its programme of building flow batteries several hundred megawatts in size each, we canvassed opinion on what 2018’s biggest challenges and successes were. In doing so we also look ahead to what this year, 2019, will hold, from the strategies our industry will utilise to meet those big challenges and what the expected direction of travel will be in some of the world’s leading markets.
In this first part, we look at the challenges faced by the industry in 2018 and we’ll move on to those other aspects of energy storage in 2018-2019 and beyond in the coming instalments.
Lithium-ion cell supply
Physically getting hold of batteries for use in energy storage systems was a constraining factor in 2018 for many. Respondents Roger Lin, VP of marketing at the Energy Solutions division of NEC Corporation, said electricity policy in South Korea has “spurred an avalanche of local demand there, making it difficult to secure supply for other parts of the world,” and the only unaffected companies were those with long-term supply agreements in place. Karim Wazni, managing director of Aggreko (which bought up storage system integrator Younicos earlier this year) agreed that “the sourcing of lithium-ion cells” in particular was a supply chain challenge in 2018.
Policy uncertainty
Déjà vu for anyone making the sideways move into energy storage from the solar PV industry: politicians aren’t ever sure how to treat new technologies and environmentally-friendly energy sources are among the least understood.
Almost every one of our recipients said that while energy storage markets have grown significantly around the world, policy uncertainty remains one of the biggest challenges. Aggreko’s Karim Wazni said that rule changes have increased market risk and uncertainty – “particularly in the UK and in Germany”. NEC’s Roger Lin said that in the UK, changes to Capacity Market conditions and changes to grid services contracts and peak demand pricing mechanisms – still a work in progress – created “shifting market conditions” and uncertainty.
Recent Comments