Utility-scale battery storage in the United States dominated by lithium-ion

A new report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows the depth of lithium-ion’s control of the utility-scale battery systems market, revealing its near totality in installations of recent years.

The oldest battery storage system currently operating in the United States is the Battery Energy Storage System project in Fairbanks, Alaska. This project, which came online in 2003, uses nickel-based batteries in a system with 40 megawatts of power capacity and 11 megawatt hours of energy capacity. While nickel has long since petered out, lithium-ion has surged in its place and achieved heights greater than it ever did in the last 15 years, handily beating out nickel, lead-acid, sodium-based, flow batteries and other challengers in the field. This is primarily due to their high-cycle efficiency, fast response times, and high energy density.

Utility-scale systems as such have at least one megawatt of power capacity — the maximum instantaneous power output available. Yet their use and success can also be measured in energy capacity — the maximum energy that can be stored or discharged from them during one charge-discharge cycle. The latter is measured in megawatt hours. At the end of 2018, the United States boasted 862 MW of operating utility-scale battery storage power capacity and around 1,236 MWh of battery energy capacity, with lithium-ion making up approximately 90 percent of either capacity.

There are other, newer battery technologies under development, with the potential to provide even greater capabilities than lithium-ion, but for the moment, the latter dominates. It is likely to be lithium-ion that continues to benefit if the United States reaches EIA predictions over the next few years, which note that battery storage power capacity could top 2,500 MW by 2023 — providing there are no major changes to planned additions.