The energy storage market enjoyed another record year for deployment in 2018, according to a new study by Navigant Research.
The news is not so surprising for a growth sector that is just finding its feet. However, while that growth is driving energy storage into new applications and in increasing volumes, the geographic distribution remains concentrated in just ten countries. Those being U.K., France, Germany, U.S., Brazil, India, China, Japan, South Korea and Australia.
Navigant expects these countries to install 1,242.1MW of energy storage in 2019, which it predicts will represent 80% of the market all in all.
As costs fall and the regulatory goalposts shift (in a positive direction) more and more use cases become economical in more territories.
Most new energy storage markets start off with systems providing short-duration discharges that provide services to the grid such as recalibrating the frequency. These are often rewarded through specifically designed market structures.
“In terms of applications for new utility-scale energy storage projects, solar plus storage has emerged as a major opportunity and driver of new growth,” says Alex Eller, senior research analyst at Navigant Research. “The rapidly falling costs for both technologies have made combined solar plus storage plants economically competitive against conventional fossil fuel plants in a growing number of markets, which allows a solar plant to be a predictable resource for grid operators.”
With around 100GW of solar installed annually the scale of that particular opportunity is significant.
Discharging batteries storing renewable electricity to meet peaks in demand instead of starting up natural gas peaker plants is proving increasingly economical. U.S. developer Fluence has commissioned research that found the economics could work not just in the very peakiest moments of demand but further down the shoulders of these peaks as well.
Storage facilities, particularly battery-based storage can also deliver extremely fast start-up times responding to momentary fluctuations on the grid that can trigger blackouts.
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