SMA looks to help installers tap old customers for storage sales

Inverter manufacturer SMA is demonstrating the Sunny Boy Storage inverter at SEUK|CE LIVE, which it claims can help solar installers looking to sell battery systems.

“The Sunny Boy Storage is backward compatible,” said James Felstead, UK sales director at SMA. “So if you’re an installer and you want to go back to all those customers that you sold a PV system to, then you only need to take a battery and the inverter with you, because it is already compatible with whatever solar inverter is there. This means installers require no further training for the inverter part of the storage installation but Felstead urged installers to train up on all aspects of delivering household battery storage installs.

“If you can install an SMA PV inverter, you can install the Sunny Boy Storage. It’s very important that installers are also trained up on how to sell, size and install a residential storage system,” he added. Felstead said that the current number of installers qualified to install the Tesla systems was sufficient for what remains an early adopter market. If this number is to grow from the current level of around 120, further price drops or the emergence of sufficient early adopters will be required to create the demand.

“Storage is a sexy technology and it sells itself, it doesn’t need a pay-off necessarily but I’m confident that there will be a payback,” said Felstead. “The battery prices are falling and that makes up the majority of the cost. Tesla Powerwalls have gone as low as £7000 for an installed system but that needs to fall to around £4000 to be really attractive.”