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Battery storage costs have evolved rapidly over the past several years, necessitating an update to storage cost projections used in long-term planning models and other activities. This work documents the development of these projections, which are based on recent publications of storage costs.
The projections are developed from an analysis of recent publications that include utility-scale storage costs. The suite of publications demonstrates wide variation in projected cost reductions for battery storage over time.
Battery cost projections for 4-hour lithium-ion systems, with values relative to 2024. The high, mid, and low cost projections developed in this work are shown as bold lines. Published projections are shown as gray lines. Figure values are included in the Appendix.
By definition, the projections follow the same trajectories as the normalized cost values. Storage costs are $147/kWh, $234/kWh, and $339/kWh in 2035 and $108/kWh, $178/kWh, and $307/kWh in 2050. Costs for each year and each trajectory are included in the Appendix, including costs for years after 2050. Figure 4.
The Southern Thailand Wind Power and Battery Energy Storage Project, funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in 2020, was the first private sector initiative to support the development of 10 MW utility-scale wind power generation with an integrated 1.88 MWh BESS in Thailand.
In July 2022, the China Energy Construction Corporation began construction of the first solar thermal storage demonstration project in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China, with 10 MW of thermal storage and 90 MW of solar power. In particular, China showcased its climate leadership in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
Energy storage allows for the increased use of wind and solar power, which can not only increase access to power in developing countries, but also increase the resilience of energy systems, improve grid reliability, stability, and power quality, essential to promoting the productive uses of energy.
This implies a major shift in energy storage investors to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) from power grid companies such as China Energy, Huaneng, Huadian, and State Power Investment Corporation (SPIC) .