How much does thermal energy storage cost?

In our base case, the cost of thermal energy storage requires a storage spread of 13.5 c/kWh for a 10MW-scale molten salt system to achieve a 10% IRR, off of $350/kWh of capex costs. Costs are sensitive to capex, utilization rates, opex, electricity prices and round trip losses. The sensitivities can be stress tested in the data-file.

How much does a solar thermal system cost?

However, the solar thermal systems range only from 5 to 9 $/kWh with a payback between 2 and 6 years. Furthermore, the results also have shown a variation with the locations. The payback period is found to be 6 years through economic feasibility study when solar thermal technology is integrated with the textile industry (Sharma et al., 2017a).

What is a thermal energy storage data-file?

This data-file captures the costs of thermal energy storage, buying renewable electricity, heating up a storage media, then releasing the heat for industrial, commercial or residential use. Our base case requires 13.5 c/kWh-th for a 10% IRR, however 5-10 c/kWh-th heat could be achieved with lower capex costs.

How much does solar energy storage cost?

Adding solar energy storage typically costs between $12,000 and $20,000. For example, a Powerwall battery costs about $15,500 fully installed by Tesla, whereas a Panasonic EverVolt battery would be closer to $18,000.

How do thermal energy storage solutions work?

Thermal energy storage solutions aim to help integrate solar and wind into power grids, by absorbing excess generation that would otherwise be curtailed, and then re-releasing the heat later when renewables are not generating. Different storage media are compared in one of the back-up tabs of the model.

How much heat does a thermal energy storage system lose?

As a generalization, a large and well-insulated thermal energy storage system loses 1-2% of its stored heat over the course of 24-hours. The full data-file contains the workings behind our recent deep-dive into thermal energy storage.