What insurers want battery developers to understand right now
There’s progress in battery energy storage system (BESS) risk maturity, but insurers are warning of supply chain problems, while OEMs are tightening their treatment of warranties.
Battery energy storage systems (BESS) are not an obscure insurance outlier, and the good news for the battery industry is that as deployments scale and technology matures, underwriters are beginning to see enough data to price risk with more confidence. At the same time, there are enough incidents in the industry to flag new cost drivers and see grey areas in liability emerge.
Oliver Litterick, head of renewables at TMGX (formerly known as GCube Insurance), a global insurer of BESS projects, told ESS News that a balance between optimism and caution, and a constant state of adaption is where the battery insurance market finds itself, but it’s still all taking shape in front of us.
“Are we going to make an underwriting profit over the long term on BESS? The early signs are good,” said Litterick, describing the sector as “still in its embryonic stage,” when compared to traditional areas of insurance. And despite the very large volatile chemicals in use, batteries, he added, big batteries appear more resilient to natural catastrophe exposure than solar and lack the moving parts of wind assets, at least.
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