Overview of the Energy Storage Market (excerpt)
Energy Storage at the utility level is a $2-billion industry in the United States. Batteries and fuel cells for transportation and other non-consumer uses represent an additional $14 billion, but the broader energy storage business offers considerable potential given the interest of investors, utilities, governments and the world's largest corporations.... Advocates for the emerging energy storage industry say the corner to commercial viability is being turned, with advanced battery systems, flywheel energy systems and other technologies coming of age this year in terms of price points and technology. In simple terms, the market segments range from technologies that can deliver precise amounts of electricity very rapidly but for a short duration (supercapacitors, batteries and flywheels) to systems that take longer to ramp up but can supply tens or hundreds of MW for many hours (compressed air energy storage and pumped storage hydropower)...
Investors Validate the Energy Storage Space
...There is no dominant investor in the storage space given investors' desire for diversification, although General Electric (GE Commercial Finance, GE Energy Financial Services, GE Capital or GE Equity), RockPort Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers are among investors with multiple holdings in storage.... Energy storage is well suited to the venture investor model as it possesses key characteristics not in all cleantech sectors materials science, chemistry, IP, and manufacturing. Energy storage also has significantly more scope for technology improvement than solar and wind, for example...
Lux Research reported that after several lean years, venture capital investment in energy storage technologies is soaring: In 2007, makers of batteries, capacitors, fuel cells, energy harvesting and related products raised total funding of $709 million, up 74% from 2006. The leaders in attracting VC are battery specialists...
Rising Gas Prices and Renewables Breathe Life into Compressed Air Energy Storage Technology (excerpt)
While no utility-scale compressed air energy storage (CAES) plants have been built for 17 years, CAES technology is gaining increasing attention and inter¬est from independent power producers (IPPs), power utilities and energy investors. Among the recent developments: A new CAES technology company, Energy Storage and Power, has been established by a major U.S. energy company; the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has agreed to help finance two projects to demonstrate advanced CAES technology; two large-scale CAES project have been proposed in the Midwest, one in Ohio by a firm with background in the oil and gas industry, and one in Iowa that will be paired with a wind farm owned by an association of Midwestern municipal utilities.
Regulatory Issues Pose Barriers (excerpt)
In the United States, regulatory issues pose some barriers to deployment of storage systems. In the competitive electricity markets, public utility commissions require that energy and ancillary services be provided by unregulated entities like independent power producers. This means that energy storage technologies like NAS batteries deployed by regulated utilities for grid support (improved reliability, deferral of transmission upgrades) cannot be used to provide energy and ancillary services to the market. Without access to the full spectrum of values that a storage technology makes possible, investment in storage will be limited to say the least. This is just one example of the need for new market rules and business models.
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Also available from Climate Change Business Journal are recent editions on energy storage technologies, carbon trading markets, the solar energy industry, the wind energy industry, the biofuels business, and the bioenergy industry. Each issue includes trend analysis, market size and growth estimates. Facets of the cleantech industry to be covered by CCBJ research 2009 include an Overview of the Climate Change Industry and its nine business segments as defined by CCBJ, in addition to the energy efficiency business, the geothermal energy business, and other segments of the renewable energy business.
