Last year, Oilprice announced that the energy storage industry is looking to “explode” in China. The site wrote that “China will become the largest energy storage market in the Asia-Pacific region by 2024”, citing a report by Wood Mackenzie that states that the world’s second-largest economy is in its infancy absorption of the global energy market with “cumulative energy storage capacity expected to grow from 489 megawatts (MW) or 843 megawatt hours (MWh) in 2017 to 12.5 gigawatts (GW), or 32.1 GWh, in 2024”.

In the same report, Wood Mackenzie noted that the US is not far behind China and is “ready to dominate more than 54% of the market by 2024”.

And maybe Wood Mackenzie was right. This week, the Financial Times published an article that reads, “US solar industry is making headway with investors backing batteries”.

The boom in the energy storage industry is extremely promising for the future of solar energy in the United States and around the world, as well as for the decarbonisation process of the global energy industry as a whole. Although solar and wind are very promising as efficient, economical, viable and carbon-free forms of energy production, they have a major drawback – they are variable.

Depending on the weather conditions during the day, it is extremely difficult to maintain the renewable energy grid unless you can store excess energy and inject it back into the grid when needed.

Now is the time to store energy.

“Thanks to the wave of investment, US solar parks are increasingly being built with energy storage technologies so that excess quantities can be stored for release in the evenings when people go home to turn on the lamps, electrical appliances and air conditioners”, reports the Financial Times. “Fund managers, power generators, utilities, and energy-hungry technology companies are among those who make large financial commitments for solar technology projects using energy storage facilities”, adds the article.

And this solar storage capacity has the potential to continue to grow quite rapidly. Thanks to the government’s policy to support the growth of the sector and the abundant capital, the 100% renewable energy sector seems more feasible than ever.

In 2019, the MIT Research Laboratory addressed this question: what would the US need to do to achieve a 100% renewable energy mix? The answer is through energy storage technologies.

The study shows that the cost of energy storage will have to be lowered to about 20 USD per kWh (or less) in order to pave the way for 100% renewable energy in the United States.

It now seems that the bright future of cheap energy storage and zero carbon dioxide emissions is closer than ever, as investors are investing money to stimulate the energy storage sector and make it more efficient than ever.

And some prices are already falling.

The Financial Times wrote that this boom in the US comes amid “a 77% drop in solar panel prices and an 87 percent drop in lithium-ion battery prices over the last decade”.

This could only be the beginning of the renaissance of solar energy storage. And this process is supported by some of the largest technology companies in the US and in the world.