The biggest barrier to large deployment of energy storage is cost.

That’s according to Mick Barlow, Application Director at S&C Electric Europe who spoke at an energy storage conference last week.

The seminar, run by The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), looked at how energy storage is deployed in the UK’s energy system and its future.

Mr Barlow told ELN: “The biggest problem with many of the storage technologies at the moment is the cost.

“It’s still quite expensive, I wouldn’t say it’s a new technology but it’s not being deployed on a large scale.

“Therefore, they’ve got the usual start-up costs that new technologies have, however as more systems are deployed the costs will come down.”

He said regardless of this, there needs to be a change in the way the market works.

As more systems are deployed, “it’ll make it more economic”, he said  “but even so it still needs the market mechanisms in place which will let you get your return for that investment”.

He added: “Storage has many benefits but it can’t get rewarded for all those benefits the way the market is structured at the moment.

“So it needs some changes to the marketplace to allow that to happen.”

Mr Barlow also said energy storage hasn’t received support from the government like renewable technologies such as wind or solar.

Anthony Price, Director at Swanbarton and the Electricity Storage Network, who also spoke at the conference, said developers need to be paid  for energy storage technologies.