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US Energy Storage has become a hot topic of late. Tesla has their storage products that have created a lot of buzz in the industry. But there are others in the market. This article details some of the state of the art in energy storage solution and strategy.
It’s a common trope in the U.S. power sector to talk about the day that energy storage “went mainstream,” and was introduced to a broader audience beyond energy and technology circles.
Though batteries have been around for decades, that day was about a year ago — April 30, 2015, to be exact. That was the day Tesla Motors introduced its first two energy storage products, the residential Powerwall and the grid-scale Powerpack.
Coming from a household name like Tesla, whose fashionable electric cars are seen as pacesetters in the automotive industry, the batteries sparked new consumer interest in energy storage, and pre-orders for the product soared.
But Tesla is far from the first or only player in the residential storage market. While the sector is still in its nascent stage in the U.S., market conditions elsewhere have allowed other storage companies to develop working business models for residential consumers. Now, some are seeking opportunities on American shores.
One such company is Germany’s Sonnen. Since its founding in 2008, the Bavarian energy storage company has built eight generations of its all-in-one residential storage product, shipping its 10,000th system earlier this year. In December, it began offering its sonnenBatterie system — ranging from 4 kWh to 16 kWh — to customers in the U.S., with an aim to sell 3,500 of them in the country by the end of the year.
The first of those battery systems was shipped to Hawaii, a state whose high electricity prices and recent net metering reforms make it an appealing market for residential storage companies. That’s where Utility Dive found Boris von Bormann, Sonnen’s CEO, featured on a panel at the Maui Energy Conference last month. After his talk, he spoke to Utility Dive in an interview about Sonnen’s market strategy, its effect on utilities and competition with Tesla.
