2019/20 predicted to see huge growth in grid storage.

[ferrelhadley]

Amid global battery boom, 2019 marks new era for energy storage

"I can beat a gas peaker anywhere in the country today with a solar-plus-storage power plant," Tom Buttgenbach, president and CEO of developer 8minutenergy Renewables LLC, said in an interview. "Who in their right mind today would build a new gas peaker? We are a factor of two cheaper."

Some offers for energy prices from battery-backed solar arrays in the U.S. Southwest came in under $30/MWh in 2018, while the installed cost for large-scale battery storage only, modeled on a 20-MW system with four hours of storage capacity, dropped nearly 40% to $357/kWh in just one year, estimates Bloomberg NEF. By 2030, installed costs could fall another 52%, the firm projects.

Given the rapid cost reduction, Wood Mackenzie believes the maturation of battery storage puts around 6,400 MW or more of new natural gas-fired peaking capacity in the U.S. at risk by 2027.

There are bottlenecks in materials and competition from autos for the batteries so its all a bit up in the air at the moment. But one of the final pieces of the puzzle required to produce wide spread low carbon energy is now cost competitive with the most expensive fossil fuel on the grid and looks very likely to help spread the load of wind and solar pv which are also very competitive.