The United States will triple its energy storage capacity in three years.

A new report puts the country’s energy storage capacity at 2.5 GW by 2023

The United States, the world’s largest economy and the second-largest consumer of electricity on the planet, is laying the groundwork for a future in which its electrical grid will be increasingly connected to energy storage sources. And the United States Energy Administration (EIA) states this in a report that estimates that the North American country will triple its energy storage capacity in just three years.

Although today the country’s energy storage capacity is around 1 GW, the EIA estimates that in the year By 2023, this will reach 2.5 GW. As of March 2019, most of this energy resource is located in the states of California, Illinois, Texas, and West Virginia, as can be seen in the following graph obtained from the EIA itself:

“Key to capturing the full value of energy resources”

This report is reflected in statements issued by the key agency in this matter for the North American country, the US Department of Energy, whose Secretary of Energy, Dan Brouillette, announced last January the so-called “Energy Storage Grand Challenge,” a comprehensive program aimed at accelerating the development, commercialization, and use of “next generation” energy storage technologies, as reported by the World Energy Trade portal.

Brouillette thus called energy storage “key to capturing the full value of our diverse energy resources.” So much so that, with 2030 on the horizon, the US executive is setting the stage for a supply chain independent of foreign sources for critical materials.

Taking this same information into account, the so-called “Grand Challenge” is setting five major objectives on which to leverage its strategy:

• Technology development
• Technology transfer
• Policy and valuation
• Manufacturing and supply chain
• Labor force

Electric storage, key to the decarbonization of the economy

This reality only highlights the need for an electrical grid in which storage systems serve as repositories for the surpluses generated by different technologies that do not experience generation peaks on demand, such as nuclear energy, whose production is continuous; or renewable energy, whose generation peaks have nothing to do with human foresight, but with meteorological phenomena.