Saving on Electricity and Even 'Doing Business' with ESS... What About Us?

[Anchor]

In the United States, an increasing number of households are significantly cutting their electricity bills by using solar power and large-scale battery systems known as ESS (Energy Storage Systems). They can store electricity produced during the day to use themselves, and sell any surplus back to utility companies.

How is this possible? Reporter Jang Seon-i investigated on-site.

[Reporter]

A residential complex near Dallas, Texas.

A year and a half ago, a resident named Kinkaid installed 50 solar panels on his roof and four large ESS batteries in his garage to store electricity.

[Craig Kinkaid / ESS-Installed Household: On the day of the World Cup final, the whole neighborhood had a blackout due to grid instability, but thanks to the ESS battery, we were able to keep watching the game. With the battery, we can live life as usual in any situation.]

He spent 50 million won in Korean currency, but what do the financials look like?

ESS battery prices have dropped significantly.

Last year, the price of a battery pack per kilowatt-hour (kWh) was around 70 dollars, or about 99,000 won.

Plummeting 45% in a single year, they have become cheaper than electric vehicle batteries, which sit at around 99 dollars per kWh.

This is largely due to a surge in the use of much cheaper lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries instead of nickel, cobalt, and manganese (NCM) batteries.

[Park Jae-hong / Head of LG Energy Solution Vertech: LFP has a cost competitiveness advantage over NCM in terms of raw material costs, and holds relative advantages over NCM in safety requirements demanded by the ESS industry, particularly regarding explosion and thermal propagation risks.]

The ability to resell electricity back to the utility company is another major plus factor.

Electricity generated from the roof accumulates in these batteries, and any surplus is fed back into the power grid.

Even individual households are buying and selling electricity.

[Craig Kinkaid / ESS-Installed Household: My electricity bill used to be 400 to 500 dollars a month, but now it is 20 to 30 dollars. Since installing the EG4 battery, I have earned 1,200 dollars. After settling accounts with the money earned from selling excess electricity, my electricity bill comes out to zero.]

In the first half of this year, global residential ESS deployment increased by 128% compared to last year.

In Arizona, there is a facility equipped with 2.8 gigawatts of solar power generation capacity, comparable to two nuclear reactors.

Large-capacity ESS units are utilized here.

Electricity generated in the Arizona desert is stored in these batteries and then sold all the way to California by evening.

[Tyler Park / Team Leader of Market Strategy, Hanwha Qcells EPC Business Division: This is to generate energy during the day, store it in ESS during the evening hours when sunlight is low, and supply power to AI data centers and households that demand electricity.]

While South Korea is also seeing an increase in the proportion of renewable energy generation, including solar power, the market where surplus electricity can be bought and sold remains negligible.

[Lee Si-young / Professor of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Hongik University: Although the power exchange utilizes flexible power sources, it lacks a proper compensation system, leaving ESS operators with no choice but to think that they will not receive adequate compensation in the market.]

Experts point out that as power demand surges due to the expansion of the AI and semiconductor industries, efficient power management policies must follow alongside power supply expansions.

(Reported by Bae Moon-san | Video by Choi Hye-young)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.