China is set to become the single biggest energy storage market in the Asia Pacific region by 2024, according to new reporting by British data analysis and consultancy group Wood Mackenzie. The company’s July 9th report states in no uncertain terms that the country is poised to take over the energy storage market, as its “cumulative energy storage capacity is projected to skyrocket from 489 megawatts (MW) or 843 megawatt-hours (MWh) in 2017 to 12.5 gigawatts (GW) or 32.1GWh in 2024,” an impressive increase ”in the installed base of 25 times.”
Wood Mackenzie credits the Chinese government’s assertive policy incentives in the energy storage arena as the primary reason for the sector’s rapid growth. Thanks to the country’s major push for storage deployments in the last year, deploying 580MW (1.14GWh) to reach a cumulative market size of 1.07GW (1.98GWh) in 2018, China has already secured its position as the second biggest energy storage market in the Asia Pacific region in terms of deployment, with South Korea coming in first place. “Front-of-the-meter (FTM) storage led growth,” Wood Mackenzie said of China’s 2018 growth, “up five-fold in terms of installed power capacity compared to 2017.”
The vast majority of FTM market growth in China came from one company last year, the State Grid Corporation of China. The state-owned utility “deployed 452MWh of grid-connected FTM pilot projects, which accounted for 83% of FTM market growth nationwide last year. These pilot projects were supported by government research grants,” according to Wood Mackenzie.
China is not the only country, however, vying for a larger slice of the global energy storage market. Grid-connected energy storage deployments have increased significantly around the world in the past five years, with an impressive compound annual growth rate of 74% worldwide in the years 2013 to 2018, with a ‘boom’ in deployment figures expected over the next five years, according to Energy Storage News reporting based on Wood Mackenzie analysis in April.