Business Models for Energy Storage Rows display market roles, columns reflect types of revenue streams, and boxes specify the business model around an application. Each of the three parameters is useful to systematically differentiate investment opportunities for energy storage in terms of applicable business models.
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 independent energy storage model under the spot power market and the shared energy storage model are emerging energy storage business models. They emphasized the independent status of energy storage. The energy storage has truly been upgraded from an auxiliary industry to the main industry.
The business model in the United States is developing rapidly in a mature electricity market environment. In Germany, the development of distributed energy storage is very rapid. About 52,000 residential energy storage systems in Germany serve photovoltaic power generation installations. The scale of energy storage capacity exceeds 300MWh .
Through shared energy storage and other energy storage business models, the application scope of energy storage on the power generation side, transmission and distribution side, and user side will be blurred. And many application scenarios can realize the composite utilization of energy storage according to demand.
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).