How to distribute profits of industrial and commercial energy storage

Is energy storage a profitable business model?

Although academic analysis finds that business models for energy storage are largely unprofitable, annual deployment of storage capacity is globally on the rise (IEA, 2020). One reason may be generous subsidy support and non-financial drivers like a first-mover advantage (Wood Mackenzie, 2019).

How can energy storage be profitable?

Where a profitable application of energy storage requires saving of costs or deferral of investments, direct mechanisms, such as subsidies and rebates, will be effective. For applications dependent on price arbitrage, the existence and access to variable market prices are essential.

Does multi-profit mode operation improve the return rate of distributed energy storage?

In order to further improve the return rate on the investment of distributed energy storage, this paper proposes an optimized economic operation strategy of distributed energy storage with multi-profit mode operation.

What is the in-day optimization stage of distributed energy storage?

In the in-day optimization stage, based on the optimized output curve, taking real-time demand response into account, the real-time charge-discharge power of energy storage is adjusted dynamically with the goal of minimizing income loss, thus to realize adaptive adjustment of distributed energy storage and eliminate the risk of income loss.

Why should you invest in energy storage?

Investment in energy storage can enable them to meet the contracted amount of electricity more accurately and avoid penalties charged for deviations. Revenue streams are decisive to distinguish business models when one application applies to the same market role multiple times.

Does storage capacity improve investment conditions?

Recent deployments of storage capacity confirm the trend for improved investment conditions (U.S. Department of Energy, 2020). For instance, the Imperial Irrigation District in El Centro, California, installed 30 MW of battery storage for Frequency containment, Schedule flexibility, and Black start energy in 2017.