Commercial and industrial (C&I) energy storage in Europe, described by one analyst as “beginning to take off”, is the “most exciting” segment of the market at the moment, according to BYD’s global service partner.
Energy-Storage.news reported last week that Europe’s energy storage market as a whole grew rapidly in 2017, by around 49%, according to EMMES (European Market Monitor on Energy Storage), a half-yearly report produced by trade group EASE and research group Delta-ee.
Delta-ee analyst Valts Grintals said this big rise was due in part to the success of the behind-the-meter segment, encompassing residential systems as well as energy storage for business premises including offices, factories and warehouses which Grintals said has “finally taken off”.
Two leading markets identified in the EMMES report are Germany and the UK. Grintals said initial interest in the UK market was spurred by enabling greater self-consumption of onsite PV power, adding UPS and then building the scale to enter ancillary market services opportunities. In Germany, batteries are increasingly being used by businesses to reduce their demand charges, the portion of their bill which is based on use of electricity at the network’s busiest and most expensive times.
Investors’ focus and priorities shifting
At various meetings throughout Intersolar Europe/ees Europe in June, Energy-Storage.news heard corroborating views from several sources, including Alvaro Garcia of EFT that the C&I market in Europe is starting to shine. EFT is a ‘global local service partner’ to Chinese lithium battery and EV maker BYD, initially servicing products for the UK market but now focusing on activities worldwide.
“The area of the market I find most exciting is C&I. I expect investors to move focus from grid-scale storage more towards C&I [energystorage],” Garcia said.
As Valts Grintals also said in our exclusive Q&A, Garcia believes opportunities for front-of-meter grid-scale energy storage – while lucrative and potentially a game-changer for decarbonisation – might be hard to come by for the moment, due to what he called an “obsession” with contracts.
“Grid-connected large storage has become a little bit of a sad space because of the obsession with contracts, which are often short in length, perhaps two years and investors will only look at that part of it, it can be hard to create more than one revenue stream, with a single buyer. So it got a little bit stuck.”
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