A new report from analysts at Wood Mackenzie forecasts 6.6 GWh of residential energy storage to be installed across Europe by 2024. The economics of the technology are at a tipping point, increasingly reaching grid parity in European markets. With rising electricity demand and falling battery system costs, the trend will further spread across the continent and fuel an uptick in demand
The European residential storage market is on track for a five-fold increase in capacity over the next five years. A confluence of rising electricity prices due to pending infrastructure updates and increasing electrification of various sectors, as well as a continued reduction in system prices for energy storage, are likely to enable 6.6 GWh of residential storage to be added by 2024.
A team of analysts at Wood Mackenzie came to this conclusion in the outfit’s latest report, Europe Residential Energy Storage Outlook 2019. Thereby Europe is already the world’s most active market for residential storage products, with Germany leading the pack. Thanks to anticipated diversification of the market, the region’s installation volumes are expected to double to 0.5 GW/ 1.2 GWh by 2024.
“Off the back of Germany’s success, residential storage is beginning to proliferate in other European countries, particularly where market structures, prevailing power prices and disappearing feed-in tariffs create a favorable early-stage deployment landscape,” explained Rory McCarthy, Wood Mackenzie senior research analyst.
According to McCarthy, the economics will play out in favor of storage. Wood Mackenzie asserts that in Germany, Italy and Spain, the market is moving towards grid parity for solar-plus-storage in the residential segment. That is achieved when the costs per kilowatt-hour of power from the grid are the same as for the solar-plus-storage system.
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