Analyst Insight: Reliability and Resilience Needs Drive Increased Distributed Solar Plus Storage

Increased frequency of floods, wildfires, hurricanes, and other environmental catastrophes have forced energy customers around the globe to reconsider the resilience and reliability of existing energy infrastructure. Although renewable energy sources can mitigate the worst effects of climate change by reducing future emissions, their intermittency throughout the day and seasons does not provide a reliable stream of energy without storage capabilities. Transitioning from a centralized energy source to a network of distributed energy resources (DER) can provide lifesaving power and heat when the grid fails. Distributed solar plus storage is a trifecta of clean, reliable, and resilient energy that can serve residential, commercial, industrial, and off-grid/remote customers around the globe.

The most concentrated markets for distributed solar plus storage are North America, Western Europe, and Asia Pacific. There has been minimal activity in the distributed market throughout most of Latin America and the Middle East & Africa due to the limited number of active vendors, nascent business models, costs, and prohibitive electricity prices and rate structures.

This Guidehouse Insights Analyst Insight report provides an overview of the market including market inflection trends, market drivers and barriers, global energy storage market forecasts, regional market analysis of energy storage capacity, and key recommendations for stakeholders in the energy storage industry. The report covers data from the Energy Storage Tracker released in 4Q 2020.