Ali Asghar, a senior associate for Bloomberg New Energy Finance, says falling battery prices are driving a huge increase in battery storage worldwide. “Musk has set a benchmark on how quickly you can install and commission a battery of this size,” he says. Falling costs are “making them a compelling mainstream option for energy-storage applications in many areas around the world, and projects even bigger than Tesla’s are now under construction.”
Industry analysts expect prices to continue to decline in the years ahead. They also believe Tesla competitors will be able to act quickly to get large storage batteries installed. That’s all good news, but Saul Kavonic, an analyst for consulting company Wood Mackenzie in Perth, Australia, says speed will be less important to utility companies than the bottom line. (After all, it takes a decade or more to complete the permitting process for a new nuclear power plant.)
The principal cost benefit of battery storage is not so much the price of the battery as it is the savings realized from not building and operating so-called “peaker” plants that operate only a few hours a day. Not needing to buy fuel for a peaker plant that has a useful life of 30 years or more will add up to a lot of money in the long run, making the upfront cost of a battery backup system easier to swallow.
Read more at Hyundai Plans World’s Largest Grid Storage Battery in Korea
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