The EIA projecting an additional 1,184 MW of battery storage coming online by 2023.
Momentum is gaining around an industry shift toward utility-scale battery storage systems nationally, finds a new report published by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).
The report entitled, Advances in Electricity Storage Suggest Rapid Disruption of U.S. Electricity Sector, details upstart storage and storage-expansion projects in Arizona, California, Hawaii, Florida, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Nevada, Texas, and Vermont.
Dennis Wamsted, an IEEFA editor and analyst and lead author of the report, said recent evidence of utility-scale storage adoption is most likely the beginning of a trend that will take hold broadly across the industry — benefitting renewables at the expense of gas and coal-fired plants.
“Bigger changes loom,” Wamsted said. “In the many examples we researched, each project, by and large was driven by one of several value streams — cutting transmission charges, providing grid resilience, offering peak power, allowing for early plant closures, and the like — even if other benefits were accrued too.”
The report details dozens of examples of electric companies large and small finding an assortment of cost savings in electricity storage technology and portability.
“Installation is still tiny in terms of absolute numbers, but power storage is now ubiquitous and energy storage is no longer a pie-in-the sky proposition,” said Wamsted. “These changes are taking place today.”
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