The rapid industrialization and urbanization in several countries has massively pushed up the requirements for electricity. This has resulted in the deployment of various types of power-producing units such as CSP (concentrated solar power) plants across the world, which is, in turn, fueling the growth of the thermal energy storage market. According to the National Energy Administration in China, “111 CSP projects are underway in the country, with an aggregated capacity of around 9 GW.”

Furthermore, the organization reports that out of these projects, the first batch having a total power capacity of 1,349.0 MW, has been operationalized recently. The other plants are predicted to be commissioned in the near future, which will further augment the total power capacity in the country. Besides the growing power requirements, the rising requirement for electricity for district cooling and heating purposes is also boosting the worldwide demand for thermal energy storage.

The lack of sufficient independent heating and cooling systems in commercial and residential buildings is pushing up the requirement for electricity supplied by utilities to power these systems. As a result, the utilities sector is increasingly developing energy storage systems that can cater to the power requirements of these heating and cooling systems such as heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment. Due to these factors, the global thermal energy storage market will record rapid advancement in the future years.

The main types of thermal energy storage methods used all over the world include CSP, ice thermal energy storage, pumped heat electrical storage (PHES), and chilled water thermal energy storage. Out of these, the usage of the CSPs was observed to be considerably high during the last few years, because of the sharp surge in the requirement for these systems in the recent years, especially in countries such as the U.A.E., Morocco, and Australia.

When application is taken into consideration, the thermal energy storage market is divided into power generation, combined heating and cooling, and others, that include research and development activities and micro-grid. Amongst these, the combined heating and cooling category registered huge expansion in the market in the years gone by, as per the findings of PS Intelligence, a market research company based in India, primarily due to the large-scale usage of these devices for district heating and cooling purposes.

Across the globe, the thermal energy storage market is predicted to grow at a rapid pace in Asia-Pacific (APAC) in the upcoming years, on account of the burgeoning requirement for energy in this region. This is because of the increasing population levels in several APAC countries and the rapidly depleting reserves of natural gas and oil. Moreover, the rising utilization of renewable energy in various residential and industrial applications is pushing up the demand for energy storage in the region.

Hence, it can be safely inferred that the demand for thermal energy storage systems will rise all around the world in the forthcoming years, primarily because of the growing requirements for power in residential, industrial, and commercial settings and the increasing usage of HVAC systems in these settings.