European grid-scale energy storage demand to see mighty growth in 2022

By Trend

European grid-scale energy storage demand will see a mighty 97 percent year-on-year growth in 2022, deploying 2.8GW/3.3GWh, Trend reports with reference to Wood Mackenzie.

The company notes that over the next decade, the top 10 markets in Europe will add 73 GWh of energy storage, accounting for 90 percent of new deployments.

The UK will retain add 1.5GW/1.8GWh in 2022 alone and remain the region’s leading grid-scale storage market through to 2031, followed by Ireland with 0.31 GW/0.37 GWh of new deployments in 2022.

Wood Mackenzie forecasts that by 2030, Italy will have the second largest solar penetration rate in power supply in Europe, behind Spain, at around 20 percent – up from 10 percent in 2020.

Germany will come in third in terms of newly-added grid-scale capacity through to 2031.

However, the company analysts note that putting together grid-scale and behind-the-meter capacity, Germany will become the leading energy storage market in Europe through to 2031.

European Commission estimates that on 30 September 2021, the average EU storage filling rate was 20 percentage points lower than on the same day of 2020 (74.6 percent vs. 94.7 percent), and was around 15 percentage points lower than the average of the last five years (2016-2020) on this day.

Ahead of the heating season, EU storages reached the highest fullness rate on 21 October (77.5 percent), which was around 17 percent less than in 2020 on the same day of the year and was lower by 14 percentage points compared to the average of 2016-2020 filling rates on this day. The average EU filling rate at the end of December 2021 (53.5 percent) was the lowest at this time of the over the last decade (ranging historically between 70 percent and 88 percent), and was 19 percentage points lower than the average of the last five years, implying that the gap of the current filling rates compared to historical values increased over Q4 2021. Between 30 September and 31 December 2021, storage levels decreased by 21 percent on average, slightly up from 20 percent over the same period of 2020.