Saving on Electricity and Even 'Trading' With ESS... What About Us?

[Anchor]

In the United States, a growing number of households are drastically cutting their electricity bills by using solar power and large battery systems known as ESS. They store electricity generated during the day for their own use and can even sell the surplus back to power companies.

How is this possible? Reporter Jang Seon-i went on-site to find out.

[Reporter]

A residential complex near Dallas, Texas.

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

[Craig Kincaid / ESS-Installed Household : On the night of the World Cup final, the whole neighborhood lost power, but thanks to the ESS battery, we were able to keep watching the game. Having a battery means we can live life as normal under any circumstances.]

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

ESS battery prices have dropped significantly.

Last year, the price of a battery pack per kilowatt-hour fell to around 70 dollars, or about 99,000 won in Korean currency.

Plummeting 45% in a single year, it has become cheaper than electric vehicle batteries, which sit at around 99 dollars per kilowatt-hour.

This is largely due to the 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 Inc. : LFP offers cost competitiveness compared to NCM, and in terms of the safety required by the ESS industry, such as explosion prevention and thermal propagation, it has relative strengths over NCM.]

The ability to resell electricity back to power companies is another plus factor.

Electricity generated on the rooftop is stored in these batteries, and any excess is sold back to the power grid.

Even individual homes are buying and selling electricity.

[Craig Kincaid / ESS-Installed Household : My electricity bill used to be 400 to 500 dollars a month, but now it is 20 to 30 dollars. Ever since I installed the EG4 battery, I've made 1,200 dollars so far. When you settle accounts (with the money earned from selling surplus electricity), the electricity bill comes out to zero.]

In the first half of this year, global residential ESS deployment surged 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-scale 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 / Market Strategy Team Leader, Hanwha Qcells EPC Business Division : During the day, energy is generated, and during the evening hours when sunlight is low, it is stored in the ESS to supply power to AI data centers and households that demand electricity.]

While South Korea is also increasing the share of renewable energy generation such as solar power, the market where surplus electricity can be traded remains minimal.

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

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

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