Energy storage profit price

Where a profitable application of energy storage requires saving of costs or deferral of investments, direct mechanisms, such as subsidies and rebates, will be effective. For applications dependent on price arbitrage, the existence and access to variable market prices are essential.

Although academic analysis finds that business models for energy storage are largely unprofitable, annual deployment of storage capacity is globally on the rise (IEA, 2020). One reason may be generous subsidy support and non-financial drivers like a first-mover advantage (Wood Mackenzie, 2019).

Evaluating potential revenue streams from flexible assets, such as energy storage systems, is not simple. Investors need to consider the various value pools available to a storage asset, including wholesale, grid services, and capacity markets, as well as the inherent volatility of the prices of each (see sidebar, “Glossary”).

While energy storage is already being deployed to support grids across major power markets, new McKinsey analysis suggests investors often underestimate the value of energy storage in their business cases.

The return of investment is an important metric about how attractive an investment may be. However this is an important note that energy storage usually does not generate electricity savings directly, but allows the transport or trading of electricity. This usually results in storage not having a high ROI like solar investments, for example.

Building upon both strands of work, we propose to characterize business models of energy storage as the combination of an application of storage with the revenue stream earned from the operation and the market role of the investor.