Energy storage product profits

However, the gross profit margin of the energy storage system was only18.37%, down 2.86% year-on-year, and was significantly lower than the gross profit margin of the company's main business, photovoltaic inverters, which lowered the company's overall profitability.

Although academic analysis finds that business models for energy storage are largely unprofitable, annual deployment of storage capacity is globally on the rise (IEA, 2020). One reason may be generous subsidy support and non-financial drivers like a first-mover advantage (Wood Mackenzie, 2019).

Where a profitable application of energy storage requires saving of costs or deferral of investments, direct mechanisms, such as subsidies and rebates, will be effective. For applications dependent on price arbitrage, the existence and access to variable market prices are essential.

For the whole of last year, although the gross profit margin of the energy storage business decreased, it also reached 28.52%. In the first half of 2022, the gross profit margin of the energy storage business plummeted to 6.43%, down nearly 30 percentage points year-on-year, which can be described as adisaster.

Investment in energy storage can enable them to meet the contracted amount of electricity more accurately and avoid penalties charged for deviations. Revenue streams are decisive to distinguish business models when one application applies to the same market role multiple times.

Building upon both strands of work, we propose to characterize business models of energy storage as the combination of an application of storage with the revenue stream earned from the operation and the market role of the investor.