In the United States, 29 states, three territories and Washington, D.C. have adopted Renewable Portfolio Standards and many experts agree that storage deployments are going to be critical to integrating the influx of renewables on to the grid. But going into 2020, the industry appears to be less bullish about the prospects of grid-scale battery storage over the next decade.
In Utility Dive’s 2020 State of the Electric Utility survey, 27% of participants said they expect their organization will significantly increase grid-scale battery storage in the next 10 years — a significant reduction from 37% in 2018, and 34% in 2019. This is despite analysis by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which forecast a spike in utility-scale battery storage beginning in 2021.
“I think that from 2015 up until 2018, 2019, there was just a lot of rapid movement in this market and from chemistry to chemistry, in some cases, large promises were made. In some cases, they were met and in others, it was observed that they were not reliable, or there were issues involved, or the return on investment was not what was suggested,” Matthew Raiford, manager of the Consortium for Battery Innovation, a research organization focused on lead batteries, told Utility Dive.
There’s also the looming issue of safety — the last couple of years have witnessed some high-profile safety-related issues with battery storage, including an explosion at an Arizona Public Service facility last April and multiple storage-related fires in South Korea. But at the same time, there are promising markets for energy storage across the world, whether in areas where energy is expensive or where electricity is highly heterogenized and isolated.
“I would venture to guess that over the next few years, there will be a refocusing in the market, looking at things like safety, reliability and the kind of technical economics of utilizing these systems,” Raiford said.
Utility-scale battery storage capacity in the U.S. quadrupled between 2014 and March 2019 — from 214 MW to 899 MW, according to the EIA. Last July, the EIA forecasted that utility-scale battery capacity could exceed 2,500 MW by 2023, if current planned facilities go up and no capacity is retired. But data from last November indicates battery storage capacity will exceed 4,525 MW by the end of 2023, Glenn McGrath, the EIA’s leader of electricity statistics, uranium statistics and product innovation team, told Utility Dive.
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