Tesla has reported more than 200% year-on-year increases in both solar and energy storage deployments for the second quarter of this year, during which time the company also produced and delivered more than 200,000 vehicles.
Nearly 12,000MWh of energy storage could be installed in the US during 2021 and the market will continue growing significantly over the next few years, according to research and analysis group Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables.
The US’ installations of advanced energy storage — almost entirely lithium-ion battery systems — went beyond the 1GW mark in 2020, while in capacity terms the figure was close to 3.5GWh.
Despite the fall in unit prices for energy storage, a total of US$3.6 billion of investment was committed to energy storage projects in 2020, around the same amount as in 2019.
The US energy storage industry collectively deployed 476MW / 764MWh in a single three-month period between July to September, with analysis firm Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables describing the record-breaking performance as a “sign of things to come”.
China deployed 533.3MW of new electrochemical energy storage projects in the first three quarters of 2020, an increase of 157% on the same period in 2019.
The US industry deployed 168MW / 288MWh of energy storage in the second quarter of this year, the second highest quarterly figures on record, according to Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables.
This article looks at the current status of each of these end-markets and where there are similarities and differences in how the markets have developed, along with future opportunities.
Analysis firm Wood Mackenzie has held onto its forecast that the US will deploy around 7GW of energy storage annually by 2025 and found that 97.5MW / 208MWh of storage was installed during the first quarter of this year.
While pumped hydro plants still account for around 96% of installed capacity of stationary energy storage worldwide, there will be more than 28GW of lithium batteries deployed for stationary storage applications by the year 2028, Navigant Research has predicted.
