Isra-Mart srl: Energy storage market could reach €500bn by 2030

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Working out ways to store energy is not only crucial to linking more renewable electricity capacity to the grid, but it could also create a market worth up to €500bn by 2030.

European nations are increasingly turning to wind turbines and solar panels to decarbonise their energy sectors, but unlike fossil fuels the electricity they produce is unpredictable and commonly generated at sites a long way from cities.

Energy storage technologies offer a solution to both these challenges and a study from US analysts Pike Research earlier this year estimated the potential market for energy storage systems at $122bn (£77bn) by 2021. In contrast, the Boston Consulting Group predicted a more modest €10bn annual market, highlighting considerable uncertainty over the future of the market.

But speaking to BusinessGreen last week, Jillis Raadschelders, vice president of the newly-formed European Association for Storage of Energy (EASE) predicted the sector could be worth €500bn by 2030, although he added that technology was changing so quickly, he was "hesitant to put a quantitative" figure on the market size.

Either way, the prospect of rapid growth has sparked the interest of 13 major European companies, including Siemens, DONG Energy, EDF, Alstom and RWE, who banded together last month to found the Brussels-based EASE.

"Long term, Europe wants to have a sustainable energy supply but this also needs to be stable," said Raadschelders, who is also a principal energy storage consultant at Dutch firm KEMA. "There are several options to maintain this, of which energy storage is one.

"We see the change in the generation portfolio towards both large scale renewables, but also a high penetration of smaller generation in urban areas. Energy storage is one of the enabling technologies."

To date methods such as releasing water pumped uphill or air compressed in underground caverns at times of peak demand have formed the backbone of the energy storage industry, but newer technologies, such as harnessing molten salt, are being developed to cope with an increasingly decentralised energy sector.

"There is a shift from centralised fossil fuel plants to large scale renewables, which requires large scale storage systems like pumped hydro or compressed air," Raadschelders said. "With small scale there's various types of electrical systems - lithium ion, flywheels, lead acid batteries... Each has its own set of specifications and there's room for all technologies on the market."

The challenge now is to promote understanding of the opportunity among European governments and companies, both of which are lagging behind the US where energy storage systems are already established as an increasingly common feature of the grid.

"It's the new kid on the energy block for the utility world. Normally you are a generator or a load - now we have energy storage, which is both," Raadschelders said. "EASE is trying to promote both the funding of technological development as well as creating a level playing field for energy storage."