The growth of residential photovoltaic systems, notably in California, has opened the door wide for storage to follow, according to a June 11 report by Wood Mackenzie. Deployments of home energy storage systems reached record heights in the first quarter of 2018, according to the company’s latest U.S. Energy Storage monitor.
U.S. quarterly residential energy storage deployments (MWh)
Published in conjunction with the Energy Storage Association (ESA), the report found that 36 megawatt-hours of grid-connected residential energy storage systems were deployed in the first three months of this year, equivalent to that deployed in the previous three quarters combined.
Even so, residential storage systems at 28 percent of all deployed megawatt-hours on the quarter were still second behind the front-of-the-meter segment, which accounted for 51 percent of deployments.
Meanwhile, new additions of residential PV itself remained flat quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year in Q1 2018.
The report notes that three-quarters of that was located in California and Hawaii, but says the trends for PV and storage are expected to continue.