Another big projection of energy storage deployment

It seems like every week produces another report projecting big growth in energy storage. Well, to pile on, we just released a new report as part of the Storage Futures Study. I am a bit partial to this one as it performs a projection based on the fundamental value proposition of storage to provide largely monetizable services. Using NREL’s ReEDS model, it evaluates opportunities for energy storage in the U.S. to compete against traditional resources in an essentially business as usual environment. So even without tax credits, carbon policy, or aggressive assumptions regarding cost reductions, storage is expected to do very well in our reference case projections, achieving over 200 GW of capacity in the U.S. by 2050, or close to a 10x increase compared to today. Add some more aggressive cost reductions and we get another doubling. We also do a deep dive discussing the sources of value and the transition from largely four-hour duration to longer duration as deployments increase (which we also discuss in our "Four Phases" report). All the durations are clearly articulated in the report, so you can translate between power and energy deployments for those interested. And yes, we are working on scenarios of decarbonization, where storage deployments get to rather mind-boggling numbers, where we start using “T”s instead of “G”s in our y-axes.

We have a webinar on June 22 reviewing this work, so feel free to check that out.