The cheapest start at around £1,500, but can be as much as £10,000 – though on average, you'll typically pay around £5,000 for a standard battery system.
Statistics show the cost of lithium-ion battery energy storage systems (li-ion BESS) reduced by around 80% over the recent decade. As of early 2024, the levelized cost of storage (LCOS) of li-ion BESS declined to RMB 0.3-0.4/kWh, even close to RMB 0.2/kWh for some li-ion BESS projects.
Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) are becoming essential in the shift towards renewable energy, providing solutions for grid stability, energy management, and power quality. However, understanding the costs associated with BESS is critical for anyone considering this technology, whether for a home, business, or utility scale.
This study shows that battery electricity storage systems offer enormous deployment and cost-reduction potential. By 2030, total installed costs could fall between 50% and 60% (and battery cell costs by even more), driven by optimisation of manufacturing facilities, combined with better combinations and reduced use of materials.
How much does battery storage cost?
The lifetime cost of small scale battery storage is now around 13p per kWh. This is the cost 'per cycle' of charging and discharging 1 kWh (excluding the cost of the electricity used to charge the battery). In the residential arena, battery storage is starting to make sense in two applications:
Figure ES-2 shows the overall capital cost for a 4-hour battery system based on those projections, with storage costs of $245/kWh, $326/kWh, and $403/kWh in 2030 and $159/kWh, $226/kWh, and $348/kWh in 2050.
Do projected cost reductions for battery storage vary over time?
The suite of publications demonstrates wide variation in projected cost reductions for battery storage over time. Figure ES-1 shows the suite of projected cost reductions (on a normalized basis) collected from the literature (shown in gray) as well as the low, mid, and high cost projections developed in this work (shown in black).