4.6GW！ The installed capacity of battery energy storage systems in the United States tripled in 2021

4.6GW！ The installed capacity of battery energy storage systems in the United States tripled in 2021.

According to a recent survey report released by the US Energy Information Agency (EIA), the installed capacity of battery energy storage systems deployed in the United States in 2021 has more than doubled to 4631MW, and their use is increasingly expanding beyond auxiliary services.

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) pointed out that the United States deployed 106 utility scale battery energy storage systems with a total installed capacity of 3202MW in 2021, an increase of 220% compared to the 1438MW deployed in 2020. This means that a large number of battery energy storage systems will be put into commercial operation in 2021.

This data on the energy storage market in the United States in 2021 is part of the early release of EIA-860 data, which differs from other market reports by organizations such as Wood Mackenzie, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, and the Clean Energy Association of the United States.

According to a survey report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the United States added 4.2GW of battery energy storage systems in 2021; According to Wood Mackenzie’s data, 3.5GW of energy storage systems have already been put into operation. The Clean Energy Association (ACP) estimates that the installed capacity of grid connected energy storage systems in 2021 will be 2.6GW, totaling 4.6GW (4588MW), but its data only includes grid scale battery energy storage systems.

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) pointed out in its report that battery energy storage systems are playing an increasingly important role and expanding the scope of auxiliary services.

Although stable revenue generating services such as frequency response or rotational reserve continue to account for a significant portion of the installed capacity of deployed energy storage systems, there are increasing use cases of battery energy storage systems for arbitrage, load management, and response to excessive wind and solar power generation.

In 2021, arbitrage was considered the main use case for over half of battery energy storage systems, although the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) did not specify how much increase was made in its research report. The installed capacity of the battery energy storage system using load management as the use case has increased nearly 8-fold from 110MW in 2020 to 854MW in 2021. During this year, approximately 1086MW of battery energy storage systems were put into operation, mainly to integrate wind and solar power generation.