According to the Lazard research published on November 16, prices for energy derived from renewable sources continue to fall, but the rate of this decline is gradually slowing down. The cost of electricity generated from renewable energy sources is rapidly declining, but energy storage technologies remain still quite expensive, which greatly hinders the development of the field and voids the advantage of a low price for clean energy, increasing its cost by almost fivefold.

During the last 8 years, the price of electricity decreased by 15.5% per year for solar and 13% per year for wind power, with the largest decline recorded in the first half of this period. This year, the price reduction of electricity derived from renewable energy sources is estimated at 9% for solar and 4% for wind energy.

The advantage of low energy costs is lost when at high levels of its production it is necessary to purchase technologies for its storage. At the price of solar energy of $46-53 MW/h, the additional installation of a battery and an inverter with a 10-hour energy storage system increases its cost to $82 MW/h.

However, the analysis of Lazard shows that with mass distribution, the cost of technologies will decrease. Gradually, prices for renewable energy storage technologies will go down due to engineering solutions and economic changes. According to Lazard, lithium-ion batteries will become cheaper by about 8.5% per year over the next 5 years.

Electricity storage systems are becoming increasingly popular in the world. Complex projects for the construction of energy storage systems are realized in the largest cities of the world. The construction of a storage system with a total capacity of 10 MW/h in New York is one of such projects. By 2025, the world’s market share of energy storage systems will comprise $80 billion.