| Work Detail |
This milestone follows a record month of EV sales and strong deployment of battery energy storage systems (BESS). However, EV demand still lags far behind that of BESS, with the latter’s impressive growth reaching a 175% year-on-year increase and cumulative deployment of 19.4 GWh in November alone.
Following a record month of electric vehicle (EV) sales and strong deployment of battery energy storage systems (BESS) in November, global lithium-ion battery demand for this year has surpassed the 1 TWh mark, a milestone narrowly missed in 2023.
According to London-based Rho Motion, lithium-ion demand will increase 26% year-on-year in 2024 compared to 2023. The electric vehicle market still accounts for the majority of lithium-ion battery demand, but lags far behind the impressive growth of the BESS market.
In recent years, demand for lithium-ion batteries in stationary storage applications has doubled from 7% in 2020 to 15% in 2024, making it the fastest-growing battery demand market.
November played a key role in the annual statistics for 2024. According to Rho Motion, it marked another record month for EV sales, with 1.8 million units sold worldwide, with China accounting for more than two-thirds of the figure.
Globally, EV sales have grown by 25% year-on-year through November. However, geographically, the differences are notable. Europe contracted by 3% compared to January-November 2023, while China recorded 40% annual growth so far this year.
Meanwhile, grid-scale BESS installations are set to grow rapidly in 2024 thanks to strong renewables deployment and record cell and system prices. In November alone, the world deployed a cumulative total of 19.4 GWh.
This is the second-largest monthly BESS capacity deployed in the world to date, up 175% year-on-year. Of the 127 projects that came online, three had more than 1 GWh of storage capacity. Gemini Solar near Las Vegas, USA, topped the chart, with 1,416 battery energy storage systems.
November saw the largest monthly deployment of 2024 in China, with more than 15 GWh in operation.
Utility-scale stand-alone projects accounted for the majority of BESS deployments in November, accounting for 76% of cumulative global installations.
According to Rho Motion, the regions with the highest concentration of isolated projects are the EU, EFTA and the UK [90%], Asia-Pacific (Others) [88%] and China [56%].
Pete Tillotson, Senior Research Analyst at Rho Motion, tells ESS News that the reasons for this dispersion are often market-specific.
“For example, in the UK, stand-alone storage deployment has dominated to date, as permitting and grid connection restrictions mean that a stand-alone storage project is more likely to gain connection. More connections are available for those projects with a lower load on the grid. This means that associating a renewable asset at the point of interconnection makes both the development and economics of that project more complex,” he says.
Interestingly, one of the three largest projects that came online in November is the largest operational vanadium redox flow battery to date. At exactly 1 GWh, the Xinhua Akesu Wushixian Energy Storage Part 2 project is part of the Hami Shisanjianfang Wind + Storage project in China.
Tillotson says the project is indicative of the storage capabilities of the redox flow battery, noting that the technology still lags far behind lithium-ion BESS in terms of commercial viability.
“Technological developments, advancements and deployments in the battery space have been and continue to occur first in China and then spread across the world,” says Tillotson. “For the technology to be economically viable in the market, the operating mechanisms of these long-life technologies must first be perfected. Until then, long-life technologies will struggle to gain significant market share. However, this process is underway.” |
