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).
Building upon both strands of work, we propose to characterize business models of energy storage as the combination of an application of storage with the revenue stream earned from the operation and the market role of the investor.
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.
Although electricity storage technologies could provide useful flexibility to modern power systems with substantial shares of power generation from intermittent renewables, investment opportunities and their profitability have remained ambiguous.
We propose to characterize a “business model” for storage by three parameters: the application of a storage facility, the market role of a potential investor, and the revenue stream obtained from its operation (Massa et al., 2017).
The literature on energy storage frequently includes “renewable integration” or “generation firming” as applications for storage (Eyer and Corey, 2010; Zafirakis et al., 2013; Pellow et al., 2020).