Ratio of energy storage cost

The operation and maintenance cost in the energy storage cost mainly includes labor, fuel power, and component replacement. To calculate the cost per unit of electricity of energy storage, it is necessary to determine how many kWh or cycles the energy storage system can release in its entire life cycle.

We estimate that cost-competitively meeting baseload demand 100% of the time requires storage energy capacity costs below $20/kWh. If other sources meet demand 5% of the time, electricity costs fall and the energy capacity cost target rises to $150/kWh.

By 2030, the various types energy storage cost will be ranked from low to high or in order: lithium-ion batteries, pumped storage, vanadium redox flow batteries, lead-carbon batteries, sodium-ion batteries, compressed air energy storage, sodium-sulfur batteries, hydrogen energy storage.

The costs of energy from optimized systems are summarized in Figure 3 for two different storage technology cost structures, with power and energy capacity costs of $1,000/kW and $20/kWh (Tech I) and $700/kW and $150/kWh (Tech II).

As storage energy capacity costs rise, the installed capacity of wind or solar generation relative to both storage energy capacity and plant output power generally increases for cost-minimized systems (Figures 4 and S49–S51).

The 2020 Cost and Performance Assessment analyzed energy storage systems from 2 to 10 hours. The 2022 Cost and Performance Assessment analyzes storage system at additional 24- and 100-hour durations.