The first quarter of 2017 was the biggest in history for the U.S. energy storage market.
According to GTM Research and the Energy Storage Association’s (ESA) latest U.S. Energy Storage Monitor, 234 megawatt-hours of energy storage were deployed in the first quarter of this year, which represents more than fiftyfold growth when compared to 2016.
Measured in MW, it was the third-largest quarter in history, and ranks only behind the fourth quarters of 2015 and 2016. Front-of-meter deployments grew 591%, accelerated by a few large energy storage projects in Arizona, California and Hawaii. And the market is continuing to grow at a nice pace.
Overall, 71 MW of energy storage were deployed in the US throughout the first quarter of 2017, resulting in a 276% increase compared the first quarter of 2016.
GTM Research expects the U.S. energy storage market to grow to roughly 2.6 GW by 2022, almost 12 times the size of the 2016 market. By that time the U.S. energy storage market is expected to be worth 3.2 billion USD. Cumulative storage market revenues from 2017 to 2022 are estimated to be 11 billion USD.
There are a lot of project development players you should know in this market, which also includes a couple of startups and young companies pushing innovations. We have collected our top 9 you should know. Which – in your opinion – should be our number 10?
- Tesla Motors (Powerpack): Tesla has been building integrated battery systems in cars for over 10 years and they now have advanced to developing high-performance batteries for the grid.
- Advanced Microgrid Solutions: The young company uses advanced energy storage, load control technologies and state-of-the-art data analytics to design, build and operate customized fleets of energy storage for large commercial and industrial users and utilities.
- SunEdison: Bought Solar Grid Storage in 2015 to develop projects for commercial and utility customers.
- SolarCity: Since the company is the largest residential solar installer in the US, it’s not surprising that SolarCity offers energy storage services to homeowners. The company is marketing its services to commercial and utility customers as well.
- Stem: The young company is already installing and operating projects at over 600 sites with a total of more than 120 MWh.
- AES Energy Storage: AES Energy Storage has developed battery-based energy storage systems all over the world, which have delivered more than 3.5 million MWh of service to date.
- Ferroamp: Ferroamp has a three-phase bidirectional power inverter linked to a process control system called EnergyHub, which integrates PV, wind, energy storage, vehicle charging and smart Swedish design.
- Elestor: Elestor’s mission is to minimize the costs of electricity storage by rolling out large-scale, cost-effective HBr electricity storage technology.
- Skeleton Technologies: Skeleton Technologies is the global leader in graphene-based ultracapacitors delivering high power, high energy, reliable and long-life storage solutions across industry.