More than 336 MWh of storage was installed last year, double what was installed in 2015, according to GTM Research and the Energy Storage Association’s U.S Energy Storage Monitor 2016 Year in Review. Much of this capacity came from California, which boosted battery installations after a natural gas shortage due to the Aliso Canyon methane leak.
The leak jump-started two storage projects totaling 37.5 MW and built for San Diego Gas & Electric by AES Corp. The projects will store power from renewables during off-peak hours for use in meeting demand during peak periods.
Additionally, AES Corp.’s subsidiary, AES Distributed Energy, is working on a 28-MW solar project in Hawaii that will include a storage system to also help meet peak demand.
These projects are examples of how the use of storage at the utility level is shifting from providing short-term ancillary services to longer-duration capacity needs.
The Energy Storage Monitor also reported that commercial and residential systems accounted for 25% of last year’s installed storage capacity. Though residential storage is still warming up, the report predicts the market will grow to more than 600 MW annually and become 50% of the storage market by 2021. Most of this storage is expected to be paired with solar.
Consumers use dollars per watt to understand the payback period for their solar investment. NREL analysts realized that creating a similar way to understand the value of investment in storage could help drive the market. However, storage can be paired with solar for many reasons (load-shifting, resiliency, etc.) so the equation is more complicated.
NREL released a report to serve as a benchmark and plans to do more research to address the economics of installing solar+storage.
In the meantime, everyone is trying to get ahead to get a piece of the storage market.
According to EnergySage’s 2016 Solar Installer Survey, energy storage is the No. 1 new service installers plan to offer. While three out of five solar installers report offering battery installs at the time of the survey, another 16% plan to offer it in 2017.
Manufacturers are also making moves into storage. Though Tesla captures most of the public’s attention, there are many others incorporating storage into their business models in a wide variety of ways.
Sunrun offers a one-stop shop for solar panels, inverters and storage with its BrightBox systems, an approach that seems to be working as the company reported 49% revenue growth year-over-year in 2016.
Inverter companies such as Sungrow, SolarEdge and Enphase have also made recent moves to marry their products to storage. Perhaps we will even see more panel companies in storage, like Trina.
Other storage companies like sonnen and Sunverge are trying it out on their own. SimpliPhi Power and JLM Energy have recently announced distribution partnerships, looking to get more traction. And companies that have had success in storage abroad, such as LG, Panasonic and Schneider Electric, are also increasingly expanding into the U.S. market.