The international commitments of governments to decarbonise their economies by 2050 requires very high penetration of renewably produced electricity and heat. As volumes grow, the consistent drop in price of such energy is an important element of market growth.
However, to deal with the consequent increases in intermittency of the delivered energy and to ensure that supplies are reliably and safely maintained, electricity networks need corresponding increases in storage and support services.
Whilst the traditional ways of operating and monetising network assets (generation, interconnections, and demand response systems) are changing, new energy-market structures and government incentives are attracting new actors such as storage and aggregated service suppliers.
The global energy-storage market is growing very rapidly and will continue to do so.
BloombergNEF forecasts around 350 GW of storage installed by 2030, while Wood Mackenzie forecasts nearly one terawatt-hour by the same year.
Both expect continued exponential growth beyond 2030. Wood Mackenzie forecasts 706 GWh of ‘front of the meter’ (grid side) storage installed by 2030. Storage for small applications will almost certainly remain a battery application.
Renewables backup is the major driver of the growth of storage and provides us with another metric for the market potential of the PTES system.
The IEA estimates that 95 % of the increase of global energy capacity over the next five years will be from renewable sources – more than half of this as solar photo-voltaic (PV) – reaching a total installed renewables capacity of 4.8 TW in 2026.
Although the energy generation industry is very conservative, the political enthusiasm for decarbonisation has grown from early lip service to enthusiasm (for the concept at least) to, recently, a very strong sense of urgency. We believe that, working with our industry stakeholders, SynchroStor’s PTES will gain a rapid market foothold.
