Batteries Included, Thanks to Tesla

In a recent Ted talk that took place at the Tesla Gigafactory Texas, Elon stated that the world would need 300 TWh of battery capacity to be fully sustainable.

Giga Texas at full steam is predicted to produce 0.1 TWh. Elon believes that, overall, Tesla could scale up to 10% of world needs in the next few decades — 30 TWh. Where will the rest come from?

Not sure about the rest of the world, but here in Australia we are poised to begin a massive uptake in home batteries coupled with rooftop solar. Power prices are going up (as coal-fired power stations fail on a regular basis, creating a fickle grid) and feed-in tariffs are going down. It is becoming an economic no-brainer to install a battery with your rooftop solar. That means energy security and money in your pocket.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance believes that the energy storage decade has arrived. BNEF forecasts there will be 1 terawatt-hour (TWh) of batteries installed around the world by 2030. This may prove to be a conservative estimate in the light of Elon Musk’s comments above. Australia, the US, and China are expected to be leaders in this energy charge.

Energy storage capacity in Australia projected to 2030.

Twenty five percent of installations are expected to be domestic and light industrial. A combination of reducing battery prices and increasing penetration of solar added to greater awareness by the general public are creating unprecedented demand.

“The CSIRO predicts that by 2050, up to 60% of rooftop solar owners will have installed a battery energy storage system also, though considering the rapid change occurring in the energy storage market, highlighted by BNEF’s 2030 forecast, this Australian prediction could wind up being quite conservative,” Natural Solar opines. The CSIRO is Australia’s premier research body.

By making desirable mass produced electric vehicles and their necessary batteries, Tesla has changed the game for batteries the world over. When Elon Musk and team announced its first gigafactory for large-scale production of batteries, many didn’t believe it possible. Gigafactory 1’s battery production was going to be greater than the entire world’s lithium-ion battery production the year before the announcement, 2013. Now, one gigfactory is just one small piece of the puzzle.

Global energy storage expectations to 2030.