Lithium Ion batteries are leading energy storage for new projects – study

Estimated 1,653.5 MW of new storage announced worldwide in 2015,  33.8% of new capacity coming from North America

A new report from Navigant Research says 2015 marked a record year for the global energy storage industry, with continued increases in deployed and newly announced project capacity.

The study examines global energy storage projects, providing a database of 1,119 projects organized by 11 criteria, plus analysis of regional technology choices and market shares.

“Li-ion batteries are the most popular technology for the growing distributed energy storage system (DESS) and behind-the-meter (BTM) market segments,” said Alex Eller, research associate with Navigant Research.

A growing number of technologies were also deployed, including advanced battery and electromechanical storage technologies.

“These systems accounted for an estimated 12 per cent of new system capacity announced in 2015, the highest percentage of any year on record,” said Eller.

Alex Eller, Navigant Research

While market activity picked up in a number of regions during 2015, North America remains the largest market for newly announced ESSs, according to the report. An estimated 1,653.5 MW of new ESSs were announced worldwide in 2015, with around 33.8 per cent of this new capacity coming from North America.

The report, Energy Storage Tracker 1Q16, provides a comprehensive resource of global energy storage projects.

The Tracker includes a database of 1,119 projects (encompassing at least 43,305 individual systems) and tracks the country, region, market segment, capacity, status, technology vendor, systems integrator, applications, funding, investment, and key milestones of each project.

In addition, the report includes an analysis of the technology choice within each major region for energy storage, analysis of the leading regions for energy storage capacity and projects, and market share analysis for technology vendors for deployed projects and projects in the pipeline.