BloombergNEF: Stationary storage installations surge to 170 GWh in 2024

While progress has been steady, for many years stationary battery applications have played the supporting role to the EV headliner. During this period, lithium ion batteries were produced primarily for mobility and consumer applications, with either utility-scale or home battery systems were somewhat of an afterthought producers.

2024 saw that dynamic shift, with accelerating battery deployment attracting the attention of battery producers as they expanded their operations into battery system integration.

The trend is borne out in BloombergNEF data. The market analyst finds that stationary battery installations are comprising an increasing share of global battery deployments. By 2035, BloomebergNEF expects stationary applications to account for 16% of batteries deployed globally, up from 6% in 2020.

“It was definitely a story like when in the beginnings of the storage industry that it was riding the EV battery wave. I would definitely say this year that really changed,” Yayoi Sekine, the head of energy storage research with BloombergNEF, tells ESS News.

Sekine reports that battery manufacturers have woken up to the fact that the stationary energy storage market is “a big enough industry” to which to assign significant resources. She adds that supplying the automotive industry “where there are only a few big automakers” for which manufacturers produce specialized products, is a different proposition to stationary storage markets.

“It’s a lot more commoditized in in terms of the products. Even though there’s a lot of competition and attempts to try to differentiate, it’s definitely become a lot more like the solar market.”

Solar manufacturers invest

Given this dynamic, it is hardly surprising that solar manufacturers have been attracted to battery integration. And with large scale solar development increasingly going hand-in-hand with utility scale batteries, the fit appears to be a good one.

Well-established solar companies like Trina, Jinko, Risen Energy, and Canadian Solar have all expanded into battery manufacturing this decade. And they are expanding vertically in their battery production.

“They are even announcing cell manufacturing,” says Sekine. “Trina already has cell manufacturing, Jinko as well. Canadian Solar just announced they’re going to commission a cell and system facility in Kentucky.”

While attractive, battery production will offer little respite from the solar industry’s aggressive competition on price and the relentless imperative to reduce costs.

BloombergNEF announced last week that battery cell and pack prices declined by 20%, on a global average basis, in 2024. The latest stats from the analysts show that the cumulative stationary storage fleet will reach 168 GWh this year, making a huge jump from 96.1 GWh deployed in 2023.

“A lot about batteries in 2025”

Given this progress, the International Energy Agency (IEA) is ramping up its expectations for battery energy storage. Writing on LinkedIn, Special Advisor to the IEA Executive Director Alessandro Blasi described batteries as “the ultimate frontier” and “where the next chapter of the energy revolution is.

“When we look at numbers from IEA analysis, what we see is simply an explosive trend: for investment; for deployment and for batteries in multiple applications. Because batteries are not only for the mobility sector and EVs. Where they are getting absolutely crucial is for power storage,” writes Blasi. 

“We will hear a lot about batteries in 2025,” he predicts.

Longer duration

With the transition of revenue models from ancillary services to energy trading, or the shifting of solar production to the evening, energy-storage durations are also getting longer, particularly in more mature marketplaces.

“I think what we’re seeing is because battery costs have dropped so much over the past year, there is an appetite to either upgrade existing sites by adding more battery banks and adding more energy capacity or developing new sites with longer duration because that can be better used by energy shifting or energy arbitrage,” says Sekine.

BloombergNEF reports that energy storage systems in the U.S. and Europe average around four hours in duration, while that number decreases to two hours in China, which is the world’s largest marketplace.

BloombergNEF expects 71 GW/ 193 GWh of stationary energy storage to be deployed in 2025.