Residential Energy Storage Systems (ESS) Market

Lithium-Ion Battery Technology to Dominate the Market

Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries are nearly 100% efficient in charge and discharge, allowing the same ampere-hours in and out. These batteries offer various technical advantages over other technologies, such as lead-acid batteries. Rechargeable Li-ion batteries, on an average, offer cycles more than 5,000 times, in comparison to lead-acid batteries that last for around 400-500 times.

Li-ion batteries can be recharged numerous times and are more stable. Further, they tend to have a higher energy density, voltage capacity, and lower self-discharge rate than other rechargeable batteries. This improves power efficiency as a single cell has longer charge retention than different battery types.

Additionally, Li-ion batteries do not need as frequent maintenance and replacement as the lead acid batteries. Li-ion batteries maintain their voltage throughout the discharge cycle, allowing greater and longer-lasting efficiency of electrical components, whereas the voltage of lead-acid batteries drops consistently throughout the discharge cycle. Despite the higher upfront cost of Li-ion batteries, the true cost is much lesser than that of lead-acid batteries, when considering lifespan and performance.

Batteries play a crucial part in the energy storage systems and are responsible for major portion of the total cost of system, especially used in residential energy storage systems. The total installed capacity of the renewable energy sources is increasing at a significant rate, worldwide, and so is the installation of solar rooftops on the residential buildings.

The increase in solar rooftop capacity is likely to foster the increase in the demand for battery energy storage as well. Therefore, the emergence of new energy storage systems (ESS), for residential applications, is expected to boost the demand for lithium-ion battery during the forecast period. Properties of lithium-ion batteries, such as less weight, low charging time, higher number charging cycles, and declining cost, make it preferable for this application.

In recent times, owing to their declining prices, the lithium-ion batteries gained popularity as battery storage systems of choice for residential solar and home inverters. In 2021, the price of the lithium-ion battery was USD 123/kWh, which declined by 81.58% from USD 668/KWh in 2013.

The residential energy storage policies till date are quite nascent. However, countries, such as the United States and Germany, through state policy action and regulatory action, are creating opportunities in the local energy storage markets.

For instance, in June 2021, the United States Department of Energy (D.O.E) announced immediate policy to scale up domestic manufacturing supply chain for advanced battery materials and technologies.

Therefore, based on the factors mentioned above, lithium-ion battery technology is expected to dominate the global residential energy storage systems market during the forecast period.

Note: Reprinted from GlobeNewswire