Building on a breakout year for U.S. energy storage developers, the industry has released a roadmap for the addition of 100,000 MW, or 100 GW, of new storage resources by 2030.

"The role energy storage can and will play in enabling the transition of electricity generation from fossil to renewable sources has come into focus," the U.S. Energy Storage Association said in the report, published Aug. 24.

To support that ambitious target, the trade group is calling for key federal and state regulatory reforms, including full valuation of energy storage technologies as flexible grid assets, updating interconnection standards and enacting a U.S. investment tax credit for standalone storage facilities. Currently, energy storage projects qualify for federal tax credits only when coupled with solar power arrays.

Pumped hydroelectric storage, with nearly 22 GW on the grid through 2018 according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, accounts for the vast majority of U.S. installed nameplate energy storage capacity. But battery storage installations are multiplying quickly with traditional power plant developers like AES Corporation, LS Power Group, NextEra Energy Resources LLC, Vistra Corp. and others now supplying lithium-ion-based systems that are 100 MW and larger.

While some developers have encountered construction delays related to the coronavirus pandemic, many large projects are advancing and the U.S. storage market remains on track for rapid growth over the next several years.

"In 2020 the market is set to more than double, from about 500 MW to more than a gigawatt of energy storage installed in the United States and then from there in 2021 the market is set to triple, to over 3.5 GW of energy storage before going above 7 GW in 2025," Daniel Finn-Foley, head of energy storage at consulting and research firm Wood Mackenzie, said in an interview. "This is a dramatic scale-up, especially over the next two years."

Wood Mackenzie projects that about 27,500 MW of cumulative battery storage capacity will be installed by 2025, under BloombergNEF's estimate of roughly 32,000 MW by 2025. The Energy Storage Association in 2017 set a goal of 35,000 MW of new energy storage capacity by 2025 from all technologies.

"All projections of energy storage deployments point to unprecedented growth in the next decade," the association report concluded.