The future of energy storage shaped by electric vehicles: A perspective from China

With the growth of Electric Vehicles (EVs) in China, the mass production of EV batteries will not only drive down the costs of energy storage, but also increase the uptake of EVs. Together, this provides the means by which energy storage can be implemented in a cost-efficient way. Here we identify and compare four basic pathways - Smart Charging, Vehicle to Grid, Battery Swap and Repurposing Retired Batteries - that can realize the storage potential from EVs. A potential capacity and cost comparison is conducted for each pathway, and it is concluded that EVs can achieve large scale energy storage effectively addressing the issue of intra-day power imbalance caused by the high penetration of variable renewable energy. It also indicates that the cost of Vehicle to Grid pathway is likely to be accepted by EV customers after 2025, and Repurposing Retired Batteries pathway shows diminishing cost competitiveness compared with the other pathways. The potential pathway combinations and corresponding scale of initial capital investments are further analyzed. Finally, we realize the EV storage capacity would not be significantly reduced by the introduction of the sharing economy and autonomous driving, particularly under the Battery Swap and Repurposing Retired Batteries pathways.