There’s been plenty of talk about how Australian solar households are warming to the idea of battery storage, but little concrete data to back this up. Until now.

A new report from solar analysts, SunWiz, has revealed almost 21,000 behind the meter energy storage systems were installed in Australia in 2017, a three-fold increase on the year before.

On top of that, the report finds that 12 per cent of the 172,000 new solar systems installed in the booming 2017 market included a battery, up from six per cent in 2016.

But what does this trebling of battery storage uptake mean? Is it a sign that batteries now make economic sense to the average Australian household?

Well, it’s complicated.

If your metric is return on investment (ROI), there are a lot of variables that you need to weigh up – and they change from home to home, and state to state, and even from one distribution company to another. And we look into all that in-depth below.

But for those not banking on ROI – and plenty of consumers are not (think cars, couches, TVs) – then it’s pretty straight forward.

“With energy prices rising this year, Australians are embracing the idea of being able to control their energy consumption and costs,” said SunWiz founder and managing director, Warwick Johnston.

And battery storage can certainly do that, as long as you can afford to install it in the first place. ‘

As the SunWiz report shows – and the charts below illustrate – a Sydney household that invests in solar PV and a Tesla Powerwall 2 can achieve a $1,931 reduction (or 72 per cent) reduction in their annual power bills.

For those who can’t afford the up-front cost, there are deals like sonnenFlat – where households can install a 10kWh battery by German manufacturer sonnen at no up-front cost, instead paying a fixed monthly fee of $30, $40 or $50, depending on the system size and energy usage.

According to sonnen, this deal has already been popular in Australia – popular enough that the company is building a manufacturing plant here.

Leading Italian energy manufacturing and distribution company Enel has announced that it has launched its first energy storage project based in Canada.

Enel signed an agreement with Ontario-based Apple company Algoma Orchards that will look to use the 1MW lithium ion battery storage system to optimise its battery usage during peak hours, allowing the company to benefit from significant energy savings.

“The agreement we have just signed demonstrates the value of deploying flexible energy assets like battery storage systems to drive savings for C&I customers and improve the sustainability and reliability of the electricity grid for all consumers,” said Francesco Venturini, Head of Enel X.

By Enel deploying its DEN.OS software to power the battery, enabling Algoma Orchards to better participate in Ontario’s demand response programme – an initiative aimed at helping Canadian companies to better manage their electricity costs.

“As battery costs continue to decline, we look forward to developing many more projects like the one at Algoma Orchards that leverage our best-in-class DEN.OS optimisation software to deliver savings for customers through tailored commercial offerings,” Venturini continued.

The agreement will see Enel purchasing, installing and operating the battery storage system on behalf of Algoma Orchards.

The US is expected to remain the world’s biggest market for energy storage until 2022, with China its closest rival, GTM Research has said.

The US-headquartered firm has just published an overview of the global industry in 2017, in a report which also carries GTM’s forecasting of market trends and expected deployment through to 2022. In fact last year’s leader for installations by power was Australia, commissioning 246MW energy storage power capacity, with the US leading in energy, with 431MWh added.

In total 1.4GW / 2.3GWh was installed worldwide in what the report’s authors Ravi Manghani and Rory McCarthy said had been “one of the most exciting years yet for energy storage”. While focused on the entire world, GTM picked out Europe, the UK, North America, South Korea and Australia to be notably fast-moving.

In Europe, grid services markets in the UK and Germany really led activity in the sector, including what GTM described as “shockingly low clearing prices” of as little as £7 per MWh (US$9.9) for frequency response services in Britain’s 200MW enhanced frequency response (EFR) tender, held in 2016 with projects starting to come online last year. Going forward, as regular readers of this site will also know, a great deal of uncertainty exists regarding overhauls to grid service procurement by the transmission operator, National Grid.

Germany deployed 135MW in power capacity of batteries, the UK 117MW in 2017. Going forward, GTM said changes including unified European Network Codes which could harmonise frequency markets across Europe are expected to appear. Central and northern European markets including Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, The Netherlands and Switzerland are coupled, and – as Energy-Storage.News heard from German politician Thorsten Herdan recently, big things are expected in terms of the interconnection this provides as well.

Oil and gas giant British Petroleum has partnered with Tesla to install a storage battery at one of its subsidiaries’ wind farms in South Dakota, US, as part of a pilot programme which could see the firm further embrace battery storage.

A 212kW / 840kWh Tesla battery unit will be installed at the 25MW Titan 1 Wind Farm, owned by BP Wind Energy subsidiary Rolling Thunder 1 Power Partners LLC, in what is being described by BP as a “potential step forward in the performance and reliability of wind energy”.

The battery will be configured to help manage internal electricity demands of turbines when the wind isn’t blowing sufficiently enough to provide power. The unit will also be able to charge when the site is generating.

The battery is expected to be launched in the second half of 2018 and will allow BP to make a more informed decision when “evaluating and developing” battery storage projects in the future.

Laura Folse, chief executive at BP Wind Energy, said the project stood to provide the company with “valuable insights” as it pursued battery storage opportunities across its portfolio.

“It’s another way that we’re working to create a wind energy business that is sustainable for the long-term and supporting the broader transition to a low-carbon future,” she added.

The pilot too forms part of a much wider investment programme into low carbon technologies, for which the O&G major has set aside US$500 billion annually.

A behind-the-meter energy storage system made by Sharp Electronics with a capacity of 240 kW/324 kWh will be installed at Paradise Village Retirement Community in the San Diego area by NW Photon Energy. It will be integrated with 516 kW of solar PV and installed in 6 buildings.

An energy usage analysis found that the solar + energy storage system could save the senior community about $90,000 per year by reducing demand charges. It has been estimated that the new hybrid energy system will reduce demand by over 2,000 kW annually.

“The significant savings unlocked by addressing peak demand may have a positive impact on the quality of life for the seniors in Paradise Village’s care, so we’re very proud to be involved in this project,” explained Carl Mansfield, Founder and GM of Sharp’s U.S. based Energy Systems and Services Group.

HVAC, refrigeration, and medical equipment are primary energy consumers at the site and carry a startup load that results in demand requests and charges, but the new system is expected to result in reductions. The utility in the area is San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E). Additional savings are expected from using the solar PV system.

Energy storage has gone global, but in a lumpy and heterogeneous way.

That’s the upshot of new report on worldwide storage deployments from GTM Research.

The U.S. and Australia led the pack in 2017, thanks to several mega-projects coming online, and market drivers that reward storage investment. Germany and Australia thrive in the residential storage segment, which hasn’t achieved significant scale in the U.S.

China is just getting started, but could surpass almost everyone in deployments over the next five years.

Most of these markets have barely emerged from their pilot stages, and offer very few use cases for storage that can earn a profit. Expect that to change rapidly in the coming years. In the meantime, here’s what you need to know about the global energy storage market.

And the first place goes to…

It depends on what you’re counting.

For power capacity, Australia’s 2017 deployment of 246 megawatts beat out the U.S. and every other nation. Tesla’s record setting Hornsdale project played a pivotal role, delivering 100 megawatts in one go.

Based on energy capacity, though, the U.S. remained top dog with 431 megawatt-hours deployed last year. Australia came in second on that metric, followed by Germany, China and Japan.

South Africa’s potential as a market for energy storage could be set to improve following a change in leadership last month.

The appointment of a new president, Cyril Ramaphosa, looks likely to unblock a stalled renewable energy programme and woo back foreign investment scared off by irregularities in the previous administration.

Ramaphosa this week reinstated Nhlanhla Nene, a highly regarded finance minister ousted in 2015 by former head of state Jacob Zuma.

The new leader, who took control of the country after Zuma succumbed to pressure to resign over corruption allegations, named another former finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, to run the Ministry of Public Enterprises.

The Ministry is key to the energy sector because it is in charge of signing off power-purchase agreements between the state electricity company Eskom and plants developed under the nation’s renewables procurement programme. 

South Africa’s renewable energy programme

Developers selected under recent rounds of South Africa’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Procurement Program (REIPPPP) had been trapped in a hiatus caused by a scandal involving Zuma and Eskom.

Zuma’s government had dragged its feet over signing the agreements while Zuma handed Eskom coal supply contracts to a family business tied up in the corruption allegations.

When Eskom came clean over faltering finances this year, Gordhan’s predecessor hastily approved outstanding REIPPPP power-purchase agreements in the days before Zuma was forced to resign.

Assuming Eskom can now limp back to financial health, which observers say is only a matter of time, the outlook for renewables in South Africa is once again bright.

One of the consequences of Eskom’s financial ill-health is that it has abandoned plans to build new nuclear plants, leaving renewables as one of the most viable options to increase generation capacity in future.