How Energy Storage Can Power Energy Abundance in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Achieving universal energy abundance (UEA) and ensuring that everyone — including those in low- and middle-income countries — has access to reliable, affordable power is a key goal of The Rockefeller Foundation. To accelerate this strategy, we’ve supported the deployment of wind, solar, and batteries, built coalitions for nuclear power, and backed the modernization of energy systems.

New analysis by Powerhouse Innovation, supported by The Rockefeller Foundation, provides a framework for evaluating emerging energy storage technologies in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The question posed was: how can energy storage most effectively be deployed to drive abundance, boost reliability, and improve access for millions of people in last-mile and underserved communities?

Powerhouse’s work found that the strongest near-term opportunity is to make 2-4 hour battery storage more efficient, locally accessible, and affordable. Furthermore, the Global Energy Alliance’s work deploying more 2-4 hour-duration batteries is already alleviating bottlenecks related to adoption of both utility-scale and distributed solar energy.

Batteries that store energy for medium and long durations (8+, 12+ hours) have potential but are mostly relevant for wind-dominant grids or places with large winter heating needs. These mostly do not apply to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where the variable renewable energy share — the amount of wind and solar in use — is still generally below 15%. Most LMICs are solar-dominant and summer-peaking. Expanding access to short-duration energy storage will help increase the share of renewables in LMICs, eventually driving them toward the 50% inflection point where longer-duration energy storage is needed.

Balloon area = value, normalized by max across countries. Maxima: VRE 33% (California), per capita 7,000 kWh (California), peak load 256 GW (India), storage 60 GWh (California). Grid mix and per capita electricity consumption values are for 2025 via Electricity Maps. South Africa has significant distributed solar (~5%) that may not be represented.

This is not to say that long duration energy storage should be ignored; rather, the applications of medium-and-long-duration storage are more nuanced than previously thought and that the technology will become more salient as LMIC energy systems integrate more renewables over time.

The current pace of innovation in the battery space suggests a growing share of demand could be met by a combination of renewables and batteries by 2050, with the remainder covered by clean, firm power.

Building Independent Supply Chains 

The report emphasizes building an independent supply chain, where battery cells, components, and modules are manufactured domestically or within a given region, as a key opportunity for LMICs. This could include technologies like sodium-ion batteries, which can provide daily storage that absorbs excess generated energy during the day and discharges it during peak hours. Analysis shows that sodium-ion batteries would have fewer supply chain constraints partly because sodium carbonate is a far cheaper, more abundant battery material compared to lithium carbonate, which is geographically concentrated in specific regions and presents extraction challenges.

Meanwhile, there are a variety of medium-and-long-duration storage technologies on a plausible but long path to $20/kWh, a fraction of what current battery deployment costs today. Maturing technologies like iron-air batteries, compressed air energy storage (CAES), and liquified CO2 all fall into this category. However, they should remain a secondary priority — ready to scale up once long-duration storage is needed.

India: Primed for Deployment 

This work found that India is particularly primed for deployment. It has the largest electricity demand among the LMICs, and yet very little energy storage is connected to the grid today. Interviews conducted by Powerhouse Innovation with energy storage startups found that many view India as one of their most exciting expansion markets. Some of the largest Indian companies have invested in short-duration sodium-ion batteries while another is building a 20 MW / 160 MWh project for the largest power company in India. While other LMICs could be good testing grounds for new energy storage technologies, India presents a particularly strong combination of scale, policy, ambition, and a strong desire to develop independent supply chains.

Batteries for Improved Energy Access and Affordability

Two-to-four hour-duration grid-scale batteries can go a long way to improving electricity reliability and enable interconnection of more renewables, especially solar. Making these batteries easier and cheaper to manufacture will make them easier to deploy at scale. The end result is cheaper electricity — helping to drive universal energy abundance and provide energy access to people who don’t currently have it. UEA aims to deliver enough energy to all populations to not just survive, but to thrive. 