Morgan Stanley: US energy storage market could grow to 145 GWh with FERC support
A key question in Morgan Stanley’s analysis is whether or not utilities will be given regulatory approval to deploy storage in the organized power markets that serve two-thirds of the U.S. population.
That issue is under review by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, along with questions such as whether storage should be considered load or supply.
Morgan Stanley expects FERC will not allow utilities to deploy storage in competitive markets, and acting FERC Chairman Cheryl LaFeur supported that position in a recent dissent on a cost recovery decision.
But analysts for the bank wrote that if it is wrong in its assessment, the addressable market for energy storage could by about 70% larger, to about 145 GWh in total.
Morgan Stanley expects utilities to serve most of that emerging demand, reasoning is that single uses for energy storage, such as backup power for solar systems or arbitrage between peak and off-peak power prices, do not provide enough benefits to make storage economically viable for end users. Utilities, meanwhile, are in a better position to aggregate the benefits of storage across their systems.
