A push by US leasing giant SolarCity to serve small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with its commercial solar offering will be bolstered by a tie-in with the company’s energy storage solutions, a spokesman has confirmed.
Oil major Shell is to purchase 20MW of energy storage from Advanced Microgrid Solutions (AMS).
More details have emerged on inverters for Tesla’s new home battery system, to be made by Fronius and SolarEdge, while the EV-maker’s energy storage will be installed at demonstration and commercial projects for US utility Edison International.
Along with cost reductions in balance of systems (BoS) components and US$1 billion of investment, energy storage technologies can reduce the cost of commercial solar and drive the market segment forward in the US, a SolarCity spokesman has said.
The US market for solar-plus-storage is predicted to grow more than twentyfold in the next three years, rapidly expanding from US$42 million in value this year to US$1 billion by 2018, according to GTM Research.
The US-based solar division of Japan’s Kyocera and energy service start-up STEM have become the latest partnership to offer integrated solar-plus-storage to commercial customers in the US, beginning with sales in three states including California.
Neither commercial-scale nor energy storage have yet take off in the US. But as Felicity Carus reports, this could be about change as companies eye opportunities in both segments.
