Energy Storage: Siemens Is Expecting A Surge In German Demand For Lithium Batteries.

  Now we have Siemens talking about Energy Storage and lithium batteries. As you remember, in the case of Transportation we are talking about the disruption of the $4 Trillion dollars industry, but Energy and Utility sector is the $8 Trillion dollars massive sector of the economy. By all estimations, the Energy Storage will follow the exponential growth of Solar and Wind power generation and will consume even more lithium batteries than Electric Cars in the future. 

  Boston Consulting Group is talking about very interesting fact now: that combination of Solar and Energy Storage with Lithium Batteries in Germany has already the faster payback of the invested capital than just Solar system alone! Germany is shaping to be another very hot space for Solar Power and Energy Storage with the very bold renewable energy policy and move away from Nuclear Power. Utility scale Energy Storage systems are opening the new multi-billion markets for the giants like Siemens and now we can see how the industry is following Elon Musk with Tesla and moving from talks and white papers towards the real capital investments in the Energy rEVolution. 

Energy rEVolution: McKinsey&Company - The New Economics Of Lithium Batteries And Energy Storage.

  "It is time to study the "The new economics of energy storage" from McKinsey&Company - they will be pitching it now to their clients. A small note to the authours: Elon Musk has already announced that lithium battery packs at Tesla produced now at $190 per kWh. And mass production of lithium batteries at Tesla Gigafactory will bring this cost down to $100 per kWh by 2020. Energy storage is the missing link between renewables and the old grid, it will consume even more lithium batteries than exponentially growing electric cars. 

  In places like China, India and Africa trillions of dollars will be saved on infrastructure going with smart grids empowered by Solar and energy storage.  There is no need for the fixed telephone lines if you have mobile networks. The same is happening with Energy Generation and Utilities right now. In this case, we are talking about the disruption of $8 trillion dollars Energy industry compare to $4 trillion dollars of transportation. Below you can find links to the report and more information on this fast-growing energy sector.  Welcome to the Energy rEVolution: now we can store energy and use it when we want it! Read more"

  "If you think that there is too much hype about Energy Storage now, the anecdote from Tony Seba will be timely: In the mid-1980s AT&T hired McKinsey&Company to forecast cell phone adoption by the year 2000. They have estimated 900,000 cell phones and were off ... by a factor of 120X grossly underestimating the growth in the market and adoption of that new disruptive technology. There were 109 million cell phones by 2000.

"Battery technology, particularly in the form of lithium ion, is getting the most attention and has progressed the furthest. Lithium-ion technologies accounted for more than 95 percent of new energy-storage deployments in 2015.5They are also widely used in consumer electronics and have shown promise in automotive applications, such as plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles. Prices for lithium-ion batteries have been falling and safety has improved; moreover, they can work both in applications that require a lot of energy for a short period (known as power applications) and those requiring lower amounts of energy for longer periods (energy applications). Collectively, these characteristics make lithium-ion batteries suitable for stationary energy storage across the grid, from large utility-scale installations to transmission-and-distribution infrastructure, as well as to individual commercial, industrial, and residential systems.

Our model confirms the centrality of lithium-ion batteries to utility-scale energy storage, but with two important caveats. First, it is critical to match the performance characteristics of different types of lithium-ion batteries to the application. For example, we looked at two major lithium-ion-battery providers that were competing to serve a specific industrial application. The model found that one company’s products were more economic than the other’s in 86 percent of the sites because of the product’s ability to charge and discharge more quickly, with an average increased profitability of almost $25 per kilowatt-hour of energy storage installed per year. McKinsey&Company." Read more.

Bloomberg:

Siemens Is Expecting A Surge In German Demand For Batteries.

• German utility-scale battery market may grow 5 percent a year
• Storage market may increase to $1.1 billion by 2019, BNEF says
  
  
  Siemens AG is preparing for a surge in German utility-scale-storage demand to help balance the renewable power onslaught straining the country’s grid.

  The rapid expansion of intermittent wind and solar energy on the electricity network is forcing utilities to invest in batteries to help manage to new patterns of power generation and consumption. Siemens expects demand for its battery systems to grow as much as 5 percent annually into the foreseeable future, according to Frank Buechner, chief of Siemens’ Energy Management Division.

  “Demand for utility-scale storage is much stronger than it was even just one or two years ago,” Buechner said in an interview in Leipzig. Germany’s plan to push renewable power to 80 percent of all electricity generation by 2050 “is a given and unthinkable without storage,” he said.

  Munich-based Siemens has developed a modular battery system that utilities can deploy in cascades as large as 100 megawatts. Each individual lithium-ion battery comes in 1- or 2-megawatt units.

  Germany’s storage market may grow to $1.1 billion by 2019 from about $200 million this year, according to research published Aug. 31 by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Installed capacity is expected to leap almost 50-fold by 2024 to 4.8 gigawatts. 

  Last year, Siemens chalked up revenue linked to environmental products and services worth $36.7 billion or 43 percent of all sales, according to its annual report. Sales of energy management products and services rose 15 percent to 11.3 billion euros ($12.6 billion) last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

  The balance of German power generation is expected to shift over the next decade as clean energy growth outpaces traditional sources of energy and fossil-fuel plants are withdrawn from the grid. That change will support the emerging storage market and open the way for novel technologies, Buechner said.

  Siemens expects power-to-gas technologies to play a limited role in storing Germany’s expanding renewable power capacity compared with power-to-heat processes, Buechner said. Power-to-gas technology converts electrical power to a gas fuel such as methane. The technology may have a significant future in the chemical and metals industries, he said.

  The German government wants to cap the input of renewable energy to the grid at 45 percent in 2025 from 32 percent in 2015. A surplus of green power may be harnessed to heat homes, offices and factories as Europe’s biggest emitter of carbon pollution tries to taper its reliance on oil and gas. Some 85 percent of all German carbon dioxide emissions last year derived from burning coal, oil and gas to heat buildings or generate electricity."