Energy analyst Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables predicts the global energy storage market will grow further after expanding by 140% in 2018
SwRI’s Energy Storage Technology Center (Credit: Southwest Research Institute)
The global energy storage market will expand 13-fold over the next five years, according to energy analyst Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables.
It bases this prediction on the rapid growth the market has experienced in the years between 2013 and 2018, during which it registered a gigawatt hours (GWh) compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 74%.
The firm’s Global energy storage outlook 2019: 2018 year-in-review and outlook to 2024 report highlights last year as as a particular step up, however, with 140% year-on-year GWh growth and 3.3GW installed worldwide.
Research Director Ravi Manghani said: “More than half of the GWh during this period came online in 2018 alone, beckoning an inflection in storage demand.
“There was a notable trend for solar-plus-storage projects providing semi-dispatchable renewable capacity.”
“Market structures have generally struggled to keep up with the pace of this technology, illustrated by the limited number of revenue streams available to appropriately compensate storage.
“However, these developments have shifted the minds of global regulators, policy makers, grid operators, asset operators and developers, in terms of how energy systems can be balanced.”
Global energy storage market driven by US and China
Wood McKenzie’s study anticipates the global energy storage market will see a GWh CAGR of 38% over the between 2019 and 2024, with 63GW of capacity set to be installed.
It predicts the US and China will account for much of the growth and 54% of the capacity to be installed over the next five years will come courtesy of the two countries.
Rory McCarthy, senior research analyst at Wood Mackenzie, said: “The electrification epoch will unfold more rapidly over the next five years.
“We expect ‘renewables-plus’ projects to become a popular trend through 2024. This is especially true for solar-plus-storage projects, as the requirement for clean and dispatchable renewables is widely accepted.
“In investment terms, we estimate the cumulative global energy storage market to grow six-fold to a total of $71bn (£54.3bn) by 2024.
“About $14bn (£10.7bn) of that total will be invested in 2024 alone.”