New US study finds renewable energy storage costs need to drop 90%

Researchers in the US have published a study that brings 20 years of renewable energy generation into line with historical energy-demand profiles, to ascertain at what storage cost point renewables can cost-effectively consistently meet 100% demand. A new study, Storage requirements and costs of shaping renewable energy toward grid decarbonization, published last week in the journal Joule by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), finds that technologies with storage capacity costs below US$20/kWh will make them competitive and enable confidence in a 100% renewably supplied electricity system. This represents a near 90% reduction in current costs of materials and manufacturing of battery-based energy storage systems (BESS), although the researchers say the target varies with the target output profile of different locations.