As 12 of the 17 national policy framework plans required under including the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Directive (COM2014/94) include hydrogen, meaning that by 2025 national H2 refuelling networks need to be in place, recent topics in the Connecting Europe Facility funding programs call for synergies between clean energy and transport infrastructure and blending financing and funding to fill gaps to market of clean alternatives. The EU Communication on Accelerating Clean Energy Innovation part of the EU Clean Energy for All Europeans package of November 2016, identified “Developing affordable and integrated energy storage solutions” as one of four priority R&I areas and €2 billion from the Horizon 2020 work programme for 2018-2020 to support research and innovation projects in the four priority areas, a 35% budget increase 2014-2015 levels in these areas.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the increasing electrification of many sectors means that the globally installed electric capacity would have to more than double by 2040. Electricity demand is expected to rise by more than a third by 2050 compared to 2000 levels. In the EU, the share of RES in electricity generation is expected to reach 24% in 2030 and 56% by 2050. In 2015, installed large-scale energy storage capacity world-wide was estimated at 150 GW with approximately 96% of this capacity consisting of pumped hydro storage (PHS). See this table of DOE 2016 DOE of different storage tech installations. By 2020 the cost of storage balance of system consisting of inverters, permitting, engineering, procurement, construction, and other costs―are expected to fall by 41 percent.
Based on these encouraging trends, the global market for utility-scale storage (with economies of scale) is expected to grow from $675 million annually in 2015 to $15.6 billion in 2024 according to the “State of the U.S. Energy Storage Industry: 2015 Year in Review”. All of this is only a magical 7 years away…….EHA will be there to support and develop local and national initiatives that involve ambitiois local stakeholders and communities. Visit us at the this year’s Hannover Fair H2 and FC Group Exhibit between April 24-28, 2017 in Hall 27, C66 stand C74.