Energy storage may be reaching a tipping point, with the cost of lithium ion batteries poised to plummet according to a recent Deutsche Bank analysis.
“We believe 20 to 30% yearly cost reduction is likely,” the bank told customers in a March 2 report. Savings on that scale open up “mass adoption potential before 2020.”
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Corporate Knights notes that low-cost storage would have a huge impact. “The lack of affordable, reliable, and long-lasting energy storage has, in many ways, been the Achilles’ heel of renewable energy and electric vehicles,” Hamilton writes. “Naysayers of both point to the high cost of existing energy storage technologies as a big reason why intermittent sources of clean power, such as wind and solar, will never replace fossil fuels; and why electric cars will never be a serious challenge to today’s increasingly efficient gas guzzlers.”
But in recent years, storage has been on the move. “We’re not even through the first quarter of 2015 and there’s already reason to believe that energy storage is close to reaching a tipping point, if it hasn’t already,” he says.
“In the same way advances in energy storage made mobile devices like the iPhone ubiquitous, further advances will make EVs just as affordable and reliable as gas-powered cars and give solar and wind their long-awaited edge over coal.”
