It was a recording break Q4 for energy storage installations in the US. Image: Kenueone.
A total of 1,613MW/4,727MWh of energy storage was installed in the US in the last quarter of 2021 according to Wood Mackenzie, which says annual residential storage installations will hit 2GW by 2026.
The power MW installed in Q4 was more than the first three quarters of the year combined which saw 1.5GW installed. Research group Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables said Q4 saw impressive grid-scale deployment figures in certain Southern States as well as the established frontrunners of California and Texas.
But Q4 should have been even more of an outlier with 2GW of grid-scale capacity expected to come online during the quarter pushed back to 2022 and 2023 in light of supply chain challenges. We could see as much as 1.7GW installed in the current quarter.
Overall, Wood Mackenzie said 3GW/9.2GWh of grid-scale storage came online out of a total 3.5GW/10.5GWh across all segments in the US in 2021. That is 140% year-on-year growth measured in GW and a tripling of deployments measured by GWh. But the 3.5GW is lower than the 4.2GW figure from BloombergNEF’s competing report released earlier this month, covered by Energy-storage.news.
Meanwhile, separate figures covering all clean energy recently released by American Clean Power Association, which also commissioned WoodMac’s recent report, said the utility-scale segment saw 2.6GW of deployment last year. WoodMac’s figures cover all market segments.
It says the residential storage segment had its strongest quarter to date with 123 MW installed in Q4 2021 which was driven by sales of solar-plus-storage systems, of which half was in California. Puerto Rico installed 14.3GW while Texas saw 10.5 MW of deployments in the residential segment.
The report adds that system price gains over the last few years have been nearly wiped out by higher costs for raw materials and transportation. Battery module pricing has spiked the most of all system components while BOS (balance of system) has remained flat.
For the coming five years, WoodMac expects similar growth this year and in 2023 to that seen in 2021, but expects three roughly flat years for deployments in 2024-2026. In total over 2021-2026, the research firm expects 63.4GW/202.5GWh of storage to have been deployed. And by the end of the period, annual deployments of residential storage will hit 2GW/5.4GWh.
It says that projects are still being built at record-setting pace despite costs and supply chain issues causing delays and that its methodology includes additional risk weighting to account for supply chain issues
