The fall in system costs will help drive a more than tenfold growth in the US non-residential storage market by 2024. Commercial and industrial customers with predictable, peaky loads are increasingly turning to storage to help manage demand charges. Battery cost declines have been the dominant factor in non-residential system cost declines in the past. However, the next five years will see more progress in balance-of-systems (BOS) costs declines than ever before.
By 2024, turnkey BOS costs will decline by more than 20 percent for non-residential systems, Wood Mackenzie said. Engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) costs and software-driven declines will be key to the fall of BOS costs. EPC costs will fall as the non-residential storage market becomes more competitive. Increasing standardisation around system design, efficiencies in engineering and construction, and changes in business models are poised to drive down EPC costs through 2024, Mitalee Gupta, from Wood Mackenzie’s energy storage team, said, adding that competition in the market is driving these advances, making non-residential storage increasingly lucrative for developers and EPC companies.
One example of system design innovation is the increasing prevalence of preloaded containers, which make it easier for EPC companies to install solutions on site. Innovations in storage software will also help reduce BOS costs for non-residential storage.
“The trend of consolidation in the energy storage software market is a strong indication of how important software will be to the market in the years ahead” said Mitalee Gupta. “Vendors are increasingly bringing software capabilities in house or focusing more intensely on existing software capabilities. Since 2017 the market has seen a flurry of mergers and acquisitions activity.”
She added that software is becoming more important than ever as utilities begin to use non-residential storage systems for grid services. As well as delivering revenue from storage assets, storage software helps batteries pair more easily with solar. Software also improves storage system economics by bringing down lifetime costs.
While the forecast for BOS cost declines is notable due to acceleration versus past years, battery prices for non-residential storage in the US will also drop significantly, falling 35% by 2024. The expected drop is largely a result of battery manufacturers achieving new economies of scale, but Ms Gupta added that while BOS costs are falling, certain soft costs remain stubborn.
“Progress in BOS costs for non-residential storage does not include any soft costs associated with interconnection, permitting, customer acquisition, overhead and margins” she said. “These costs still make up a significant portion of system costs today and no major changes are expected over the next five years in the absence of dramatic policy shifts.”
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