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Power utilities, system operators, and authorities worldwide increasingly regard grid battery energy storage as a core component of energy expansion plans. Key factors driving this consideration are increasing price competitiveness owing to declining technology costs, including for batteries and balance of plant, and the continual expansion of intermittent renewables.

Grid battery energy storage market fundamentals proved to be adequately strong against the COVID-19 turmoil. In 2020, the global market expanded 47.3% with 2.4 GW of new power capacity. A robust outlook is expected for the decade ahead. Frost & Sullivan forecasts the annual power capacity to reach 19.3 GW by 2030, amounting to 134.6 GW/437.4 GWh of cumulated capacity, and the annual investment to rise from $2 billion in 2020 to $15.94 billion by 2030.

Most grid storage active systems were created to supply quick power to frequency regulation services, requiring high-power and short-duration batteries. Frost & Sullivan expects future evolutions in regulations and market designs to acknowledge and properly compensate grid storage for other use cases, especially as capacity assets that can replace or defer gas peaker plants, new renewables generation plants, and transmission lines. Consequently, more battery energy storage systems with larger duration profiles are deemed to enter the market as capacity assets.