The US installed 41.2MW of energy storage capacity in the second quarter of 2016, up 126% from 18.3MW in Q1, according to the latest report from GTM Research.
However, GTM’s quarterly ‘U.S. Energy Storage Monitor’, found that deployment grew by just 1% on a year-on-year basis in Q2. GTM said this lack of growth was countered by a significant diversification of geographies and market segments for storage. However, Lithium-ion technology accounted for 99% of deployments in this period with aqueous batteries the second most used technology.
The traditional leading regions for storage, California and PJM territory, saw their lowest contributions for three years, by accounting for just 35% of the MW capacity and 47% of the MWh capacity installed in the quarter. This will be reversed once California sees record levels of deployments in the second half of the year in emergency response to capacity fears resulting from the Aliso Canyon gas leak. California also remains the largest non-residential energy storage market, with 83% of the total MW deployed in this segment.
Nevertheless it was Indiana, part of MISO’s territory, that saw the largest front-of-the-meter project in Q2.
Front-of-the-meter deployments in the US tripled from Q1 to Q2 but were down 10% on year-on-year.
Ravi Manghani, GTM Research’s director of energy storage, said: “This quarter marked several storage firsts, such as the first grid-scale project in MISO and a large solar-plus-storage at a municipal utility in Ohio.”
Behind-the-meter deployments, mostly residential and commercial energy storage systems, in the US grew by just 3% quarter-on-quarter, but they increased by 66% year-on-year due to improving economics and adoption in new state markets. This segment is forecast to account for 25% of all installations this year, up from 15% last year. It will also account for more than half of all deployments by 2021.
The industry also benefitted from various public and private commitments from the White House that are forecast to result in 1.3GW of new storage deployments and $1 billion in storage investment.
Meanwhile, a total of 287MW of storage deployments are forecasted for the full year 2016. Annual installations are expected to hit 2.1GW by 2021.
Matt Roberts, executive director of the Energy Storage Association, said: “The industry continues to surpass milestones, fueled by increased value and market opportunities, as well as plummeting system costs. After record-breaking deployments in 2015, the energy storage industry is on pace to grow another 30% this year – increasing grid flexibility, efficiency and resiliency along the way.”
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