The falling cost of energy storage technology will break up the concentrated nature of the global market, according to a new report by IHS Technology.

Energy storage is already competitive in a number of mainly grid-based applications, while lithium-ion battery prices could fall by as much as 50% in the next five years, financial advisory and asset management firm Lazard has found.

Lilia Xie of Lux Research spoke with the founders of 24M, which claims to have reduced lithium cell costs by 50% over existing technologies and is targeting US$100 per kWh by 2020.

To hit the best possible cost reduction outcomes, lithium-ion battery producers will have to scale-up to go beyond 1GWh of production capacity, but will hit a ceiling when they reach 10GWh, a new report claims.

Will the Indian battery market scenario witness a major change? As the power supply in the country continues to be unreliable, the role of batteries has to change from being an emergency back-up solution to a long time power/energy storage solution.

Putting value on energy storage in the UK capacity markets could help pay for deploying the technology more widely, according to the country’s secretary of state for energy and climate change.

Japanese consumer electronics giant Panasonic has partnered with Tesla Motors to construct batteries in the United States at the electric vehicle company’s new battery manufacturing plant, the Gigafactory.