Wood Mackenzie has released a new energy storage market report, with a new record high for US installations for the second quarter of 2023. The United States deployed 1,680 MW/5,597 MWh of energy storage nationwide, leading to an average duration of 3.3 hours.

However, second-quarter installations were significantly lower than expected based on project pipelines. Wood Mackenzie said that well over 2 GW of projects have been pushed to later years.

Much like the residential solar sector, the residential energy storage sector has been hammered this year by steep interest rates and meaningfully negative policy changes like the onset of California Net Energy Metering (NEM) 3.0. In the second quarter, residential storage declined to 138 MW/381 MWh. The biggest decline was in California, which fell 17% quarter over quarter and 37% year on year, despite promises from regulators and utilities that NEM 3.0 would be a net-positive for the solar-plus-batteries market.

Despite these challenges, Wood Mackenzie sees growth ahead for the residential storage segment. The report said the sector is forecast to install 3.5 times more solar in 2027 than it did in 2023. It expects 8 GW for the sector over a five-year horizon.

Looking ahead, Wood Mackenzie sees grid-scale storage accounting for most of the capacity to be added through 2027, bnut residential storage is expected to rebound and maintain strength, despite recent challenges. Between 2023 and 2027 Wood Mackenzie projects 66 GW of energy storage added, 83% of which will be grid-scale capacity.

Vanessa Witte, a senior storage analyst at Wood Mackenzie and one of the report's lead authors, will be a featured panelist in the grid-scale energy storage session at the upcoming pv magazine Roundtables US 2023 event, which is free to attend.

Image: Wood Mackenzie