Price analysis of solar energy storage cabinets

4 FAQs about Price analysis of solar energy storage cabinets

Are battery storage costs based on long-term planning models?

Battery storage costs have evolved rapidly over the past several years, necessitating an update to storage cost projections used in long-term planning models and other activities. This work documents the development of these projections, which are based on recent publications of storage costs.

Do projected cost reductions for battery storage vary over time?

The suite of publications demonstrates wide variation in projected cost reductions for battery storage over time. Figure ES-1 shows the suite of projected cost reductions (on a normalized basis) collected from the literature (shown in gray) as well as the low, mid, and high cost projections developed in this work (shown in black).

Why are battery system costs expressed in $/kWh?

By expressing battery system costs in $/kWh, we are deviating from other power generation technologies such as combustion turbines or solar photovoltaic plants where capital costs are usually expressed as $/kW. We use the units of $/kWh because that is the most common way that battery system costs have been expressed in published material to date.

What are NREL battery cost projections?

NREL utilizes the Regional Energy Deployment System (ReEDS) (Ho et al. 2021) for capacity expansion modeling, and the battery cost projections developed here are designed to be used in those models. Additionally, the projections are intended to inform the cost projections published in the Annual Technology Baseline (NREL 2024).