Big deployment numbers and falling costs won’t automatically translate into project finance for battery projects, the author writes. Energy storage is a rapidly growing segment of the clean energy sector, and prices are dropping fast. Yet many are still struggling to understand how to value energy storage as an investment. As a growing number of cities, states and businesses commit to 100 percent clean energy, storage is already playing a pivotal role in determining how they

KEY POINTS The U.S. energy storage market is expected to grow by a factor of 12 in the next five years, from 430MW deployed in 2019 to more than 5GW and a value of more than $5 billion by 2024, says Wood Mackenzie Energy Storage Service. Tesla and GM are making big bets on lithium-ion batteries for energy storage systems and electric vehicles, but billionaire investors and venture capital firms are investing in competing battery technology, such as flow batteries. Breakthroug