Comments on: The energy storage market is blowing up in the United States 2021 Trends in Solar

By: Echo Wang

Echo Wang — Thu, 27 May 2021 12:52:16 +0000

How many kwh residential home storage batteries are installed last year? Any idea?

By: George S. William

George S. William — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 16:55:24 +0000

It is true that the world is constantly looking for better ways to harness and store environmentally friendly energy. Solar power is readily available in most parts of the world and do not have moving parts. We just hope soon it will be cheap to harness it and also store it.

By: Solarman

Solarman — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 22:32:16 +0000

“The pool of battery suppliers is expanding too. Solar panel company JinkoSolar is diving in, releasing lithium batteries for the large-scale market. And major residential players are improving the capacities of their core models: sonnen lowered its price and improved its capacity to 10 kWh, while the LG RESU system can now provide 16 kWh of energy. Generac, a leader in portable power, offers 18 kWh of backup power with its PWRcell system.”

Companies like Humless Universal or Electriq are offering modular energy storage solutions as well as a recent announcement of Simpli-phi with a system that can be modularly increased up to around 99kWh of energy storage. We are beginning to see a ‘blur’ between small C&I systems that are usually three phase systems with similar residential systems with modular battery expansion capacity that is right around the “business” sized ESS. Perhaps international players like Solectria, Chint, Kore Power will offer a system sooner or later for the residential 240VAC split phase market. The newly announced LG RESU FLEX is supposed to be a smart ESS that also has stackable modules of battery storage available soon. Ran across a company Kilo watt labs that says they have a system using (super capacitors) and the stuff they’re selling in Africa and Australia brings prices of $5,400 USD for an enclosed 7.1kWh energy storage module with an advertised charge/discharge capacity of 1,000,000 times or around 45 years of online use. It sounds almost too good to be true and yet there are some systems online and they actually post the cost of their modules online, for the most part in (R), Rand per module.

Some of the past complaints that residential ESS don’t have the surge capacity to start big loads like house A/C units, electric water heaters, even vacuum cleaners, washer/dryers and refrigerators/freezers with auto defrost can be a pretty large electricity draw when in defrost mode. Still it is possible today to get 48VDC inverters in the 8kW 240VAC split phase output range that can be set up master/slave parallel and give the ability to have high surge load capability with a fall back to single inverter power after the loads initial surge is served. As battery pack prices come down, it will become more common to see solar PV with smart ESS on homes and systems that allow resiliency for a more grid agnostic experience.

By: Semper Solaris

Semper Solaris — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 16:52:22 +0000

Absolutely great article! Energy storage for home specifically is starting to become a must in California especially if people are going remote with work or have a CPAP machine for Sleep apnea. With all the power outages and issues, having a battery backup like the Tesla Powerwall combined with solar can allow people to have power while there’s power outages.

The big thing here is how people take advantage. Most people tend to go for affordability in the short term such as leasing, but the better way to look at Solar + Battery Storage is to own as there are a lot more pros than cons.

Either way, energy storage is now becoming a must for residential and commercial buildings.