The first quarter was the biggest quarter ever in terms of energy storage installations, but it could also be the biggest quarter of the year, according to the latest version of the U.S Energy Storage Monitor released by GTM Research and the Energy Storage Association.
The first-quarter Energy Storage Monitor recorded 234 MWh of storage installations in the first quarter, a 944% increase compared with first-quarter 2016.
In terms of power rating, 71 MW of storage projects were deployed in the first quarter, a 276% increase over first-quarter 2016 and the second highest quarter since GTM and the ESA began tracking energy storage in 2013, beat only by installation in the fourth quarter of last year.
Much of the growth in the first quarter can be attributed to “the shift from short-duration projects to medium- and long-duration projects in the utility-scale market, along with a surge of deployments geared to offset the Aliso Canyon natural gas leak,” said Ravi Manghani, GTM Research’s director of energy storage.
The Also methane gas leak jeopardized the flow of fuel for gas-fired generation, so the California Public Utilities Commission in May 2016 granted fast track approval for 104.5 MW of battery-based storage systems Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric’s service areas to offset the possible curtailment of gas-fired generation.
While the speed and scale of the Aliso Canyon storage deployments is impressive Manghani says the industry “shouldn’t get too comfortable” with that scenario because there are not that many 10+ megawatt-hour projects in the 2017 pipeline, indicating that the first quarter may be the largest quarter this year.
The completion of large storage projects is also reflected in the fact that 91% of all deployments in the first quarter were front of the meter projects. Front of the meter installations also grew by 591% on a year over year basis, boosted by large projects in California, as well as Arizona and Hawaii.
In Arizona, Tucson Electric Power signed a power purchase agreement for a low cost solar-plus-storage project that features a 100 MW solar array and a 30 MW, 120 MWh energy storage facility.
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