Today, energy storage deployments have become more of a choice for U.S. utilities, commercial building owners, and households. The biggest opportunity for energy storage projects in 2018 may be in the commercial market. Because the combination of solar energy and energy storage can create a cost-effective combination of power generation, giving operators great flexibility to control their energy costs.
Commercial solar projects are economically difficult because the expenses of commercial customers usually include the cost of electricity consumption and the cost based on electricity peak demand. Traditional solar network metering can only reduce part of the cost of electricity, but the combination of solar energy and energy storage can reduce the cost of both components and provide a valuable combination for the renewable energy industry.
Commercial solar + energy storage solutions will appear industry leaders
Most commercial energy storage projects in the United States use independent systems such as Stem to provide energy storage solutions. Tesla's Powerpack is another popular product, but it is not used with SolarCity's solar products.
SunPower is committed to providing a one-stop solution for commercial solar energy and energy storage, and is playing a leading role in the market. It has been a leader in the field of commercial solar energy: The company has installed approximately 1.7GW GW of solar energy projects worldwide and claims to rank first in the US market share.
Its turnkey Helix commercial solar solution is being combined with a type of energy storage product called HelixStorage that will provide customers with a complete solution. SunPower sold the system as an installer's turnkey solution and worked with large corporate customers to develop systems. Then SunPower will use its own software and monitoring to control the energy storage system to create value.
After installation, the HelixStorage system will reduce the customer's peak demand for electricity, even when the highest electricity price is used to store less expensive solar energy. SunPower stated that it can use data collected from monitoring 1.7GW of commercial solar projects to maximize the benefits of solar + energy storage projects.
Combining these two solutions can also help corporate finance. So far, most commercial solar projects must be independent of the financing of energy storage projects, which is very tricky for developers. Bringing them together should make the financing and financial management of the company easier.
Commercial energy storage is very complex, and residential energy storage is not the case. The algorithm developed by the energy storage company needs to consider simultaneously meeting on-site consumer demand, solar energy production, time usage rates, and peak demand costs.
When companies introduce residential solar + energy storage solutions, these requirements will not be so complicated. Most residential customers usually do not have the peak demand for electricity, and energy storage deployments can maximize the potential changes in on-site consumer demand and time usage and perform energy arbitrage as efficiently as possible. Therefore, any company that can gain a huge market share in commercial solar energy and energy storage projects may convert it into a residential solar energy and energy storage project. SunPower hopes to expand in this area in 2018.
Commercial solar energy + energy storage projects began as a way to save energy consumption and peak demand costs for companies, and with the increase in installations, they may face more opportunities. Virtual power plants can connect thousands of energy storage devices together and provide services to the grid. People will see that utilities pay for other services (such as frequency regulation and demand response), which will make energy storage deployment more economical. It is feasible and creates numerous opportunities for the establishment of larger enterprises in the energy storage industry.
