Energy Storage – Balancing Cost and Value

摘要

Products are often priced somewhere between their production cost and what their applications are considered to be worth. While for most products, the production cost may be relatively known, it may not be as clear for the application value since it could be based on the market value, avoided cost or the customer’s willingness to pay. For energy storage, both production cost and application value are complex. The cost of producing energy storage could depend on the application, such as the length of time it is supposed to be available for discharge. The value of storage application varies from country, state, or province. Federal and state-level incentives, available in selected areas, make the market value and product pricing even more complicated as they could completely change the business case in favor or against certain storage applications. However, for a given set of parameters, an optimal price for obtaining a balanced market penetration for maximum sales or profit can be obtained for energy storage devices. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, apply market penetration rules to grid storage in order to find the optimum price that would potentially maximize the sales profit. Second, discuss what is really needed to penetrate the storage market and whether a less expensive storage system is really the key to wide opening the storage market.