US Energy Storage Market Experiences Largest Quarter Ever
The first quarter of 2017 was the biggest in history for the U.S. energy storage market.
According to GTM Research and the Energy Storage Association’s (ESA) latest U.S. Energy Storage Monitor, 234 megawatt-hours of energy storage were deployed in the first quarter, which represents more than fiftyfold growth year-over-year.
When measured in megawatts, it was the second largest quarter in history, only behind the fourth quarter of 2016. Front-of-meter deployments grew 591 percent year-over-year, boosted by a few large projects in Arizona, California and Hawaii.
“Much of this growth can be attributed to a shift from short-duration projects to medium- and long-duration projects in the utility-scale market, along with a surge of deployments geared to offset the Aliso Canyon natural gas leak,” said Ravi Manghani, GTM Research’s director of energy storage. “Although, the industry shouldn’t get too comfortable, as with fulfillment of Aliso Canyon deployments, there aren’t that many 10+ megawatt-hour projects in the 2017 pipeline, indicating that the first quarter may be the largest quarter this year.”
In all, front-of-meter energy storage represented 91 percent of all deployments for the quarter.
The behind-the-meter market segment, which is made up of residential and commercial energy storage deployments, declined 27 percent year-over-year in megawatt-hour terms. The report attributes the slowdown to a pause in California’s Self-Generation Incentive Program.
California will remain the undisputed king of the U.S. storage market over the next five years. Arizona, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York and Texas will all battle for second place, with each market forming a significant chunk of deployments through 2022. At that point, GTM Research forecasts the U.S. annual market to reach 2.6 gigawatts, and 7.2 gigawatt-hours.
