File:Battery-cost-learning-curve.png

English: Batteries and electricity storage follow learning curves too

One of the downsides of renewable sources is their intermittent supply cycle. The sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. Technologies like batteries that store electric power are key to balance the changing supply from renewables with the inflexible demand for electricity.

Fortunately electricity storage technologies are also among the few technologies that are following learning curves – their learning curve are indeed very steep, as the chart here shows.

This chart is from my colleague Hannah Ritchie; she documents in her article that the price of batteries declined by 97% in the last three decades.41

At their current price there might only be demand for five large power storage systems in the world, but as a prediction for the future this might sound foolish one day (if you don’t know what I’m alluding to, you skipped reading the text in the fold-out box above).