Global energy storage outlook H1 2020

Our H1 2020 outlook provides key annual deployment data and supporting information on global stationary energy storage deployments from 2013 out to 2025.

We focus on the key markets of Australia, Canada, China, Germany, India, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom and United States, and this year have expanded our EMEA coverage to include the key European markets of France, Italy and Spain.

The report presents detailed insight on market drivers, policy, regulation and supply chain fundamentals, covering everything you need to know about this rapidly evolving market. The included data file provides annual deployment data across all market segments and a country breakdown.

Key Messages

• The global market has contracted for the first time by 13% in gigawatt-hour terms
  • In our last update, we noted the reality of this risk, and our suspicions have been confirmed. Last year, 3.4 GW/6.2 GWh of capacity was deployed, whereas this year 2.9 GW/5.3 GWh were deployed. There are a few key reasons for this.
• South Korea 2018 growth: too big, too soon?
  • It did not take long before cracks appeared in South Korea’s unbelievable 2018 market growth. Since breaking the market record for most storage deployed in a single year, 28 fire incidents have been reported, pulling this bull market into a 70% year-over-year decline. 2019 saw an over 1 GWh reduction in annual deployments, enough to put a generally slow year into the red in growth terms.
• China, the U.K. and Canada also contracted
  • The reality of the risk involved in energy storage revenue streams, and the general lack of revenue options, hit deployments in all of these markets. One of China’s largest players exited the market, and the Xinjiang government canceled around 400 MWh of projects post-procurement. The U.K. market was slowed by a saturated frequency market and a behind-the-meter business case that is still in disarray as the regulator resets the country’s demand-charge regime. Canada is dominated by Ontario’s Global Adjustment charge, a relatively small market, so participants have exited this market or reduced deployment ambitions.
• We expect 2019 to be a bump in the road, with the current pipeline setting up 2020 to be a bumper year
  • The energy storage market is anything but predictable, but as it matures, more credible pipelines are developing. China, Australia and the U.S. all have grand ambitions to deploy gigawatts’ worth of energy storage. We expect these to be the key global growth markets. Wood Mackenzie also sees growth returning to other key global markets, although deployment volumes are overshadowed by the three leaders.
• Black swan events
  • Over the past month, the everchanging coronavirus pandemic and state of economy have unleashed major uncertainties onto our H1 2020 outlook, so we have started to investigate the impacts of these major black swan events on the energy storage industry.
  • We are closely monitoring the coronavirus impacts and have added an interim scenario for this within the report.

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• Table of contents
• List of figures
• Sample figures
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