A new report from Navigant Research examines the market for energy storage systems for renewable energy integration (ESRI), including global market forecasts for capacity and revenue, broken out by application, technology, and region, through 2025.
Variable renewable energy, or renewable energy sources that are non-dispatchable due to a fluctuating nature—like wind power and solar photovoltaics (PV)—continues to proliferate, creating challenges to the electrical grid, which was designed using a centralized model with predictable power flows. As these challenges increase, so does the market for energy storage systems (ESSs) designed specifically to facilitate the integration of renewable energy generation.
According to a new report from Navigant Research, new installed ESRI power capacity is expected to grow from 196.2 MW in 2015 to 12.7 GW in 2025.
“It’s expected that the compensation schemes for variable generation will drive the market for ESRI, and markets with compensation structures that favor dispatchability and self-consumption of wind and solar electricity will lead the market,” says Anissa Dehamna, principal research analyst with Navigant Research . “With few exceptions, islands and isolated grids are expected to lead the market in near-term due to higher renewables penetration and little to no interconnections with neighboring grid systems to balance instability.”
One of the primary drivers of the grid-tied ESS market is the decreasing cost of advanced batteries, according to the report. While system costs are still one of the biggest barriers to the industry’s growth, declining prices and a flood of new systems integrators are opening up new use cases and geographic markets.
The report, Energy Storage for Renewables Integration , analyzes the global ESRI market, focusing on four primary applications: commercial ESRI, residential ESRI, utility-scale solar integration, and utility-scale wind integration. These four applications include a variety of different functions for an ESS to perform that can facilitate a seamless integration of variable renewable energy generation.
The study provides an analysis of the market issues, including business cases, opportunities, and challenges, associated with ESRI. Global market forecasts for capacity and revenue, broken out by application, technology, and region, extend through 2025. The report also examines the key technologies related to ESRI, as well as the competitive landscape.