Dive Brief:
- Battery storage costs are falling rapidly and will be cost competitive with or less expensive than natural gas-fired generation in 18 months, according to Steve Hellman, EOS Energy Storage president.
- EOS, which Utility Dive recently picked as a company to watch, plans to sell its batteries next year for $200/kWh to $250/kWh. The company expects to bring the price down to $160/kWh.
- The main value from batteries will come from capacity payments and combining them with distributed generation, Hellman said.
Dive Insight:
It's too soon to tell if storage has reached the turning point. But if Hellman's prediction turns out to be right, EOS will have achieved the so-called "holy grail" of the power grid -- cost-effective energy storage.
“Many think energy storage is somehow a threat to the utility paradigm,” Hellman said. “It’s actually not. The energy storage – in so far as it can provide locational capacity – can resolve problems for utilities in a very cost-effective fashion, allowing them to better optimize their capital spend for example.”
Grid-scale storage can be used to help utilities integrate renewable generation onto the grid, mitigating its intermittent nature. This will certainly be a development to look out for as the U.S. moves towards a cleaner energy future.
