Germany’s Home Battery Storage Boom Continues

While yet to really take off in Australia, home batteries are installed more often than not with new solar power systems in Germany.

Figures released by Germany’s Bundesverband Energiespeicher (BVES – German Energy Storage Association) indicate it was a busy year for residential battery installations in 2020, and 2021 is shaping up to be another big one.

Across all technologies and segments, sales in Germany’s energy storage industry grew by over 10 percent to EUR 7.1 billion in 2020 – and home batteries accounted for nearly half that figure (EUR 3.5 billion). Up to the end of last year, an estimated 285,000 home storage systems had been installed across the country says BVES, representing 2.3 GWh of storage capacity. During 2020, an estimated 100,00 systems were installed.

The report also notes capacity of installed batteries is growing “slowly but steadily” – from an average 8 kWh in 2019 to 8.5 kWh in 2020.

Looking to this year, BVES expects somewhere between 100,000 and 160,000 installations.

I wasn’t able to find any current stats on the most popular home battery brands in Germany, but last year EUPD Research pegged the residential storage leaders as being  Sonnen with a 20% market share and BYD with 19%. At that point, Tesla had just 2%.

Germany Vs. Australia

One of the most interesting points in BVES’s presentation is its mention that almost 70% of new solar systems installed in Germany include batteries.

Just as a comparison, in Australia last year there were an estimated 8,869 concurrent battery installations among a total of around 350,000 small-scale solar systems installed – so around 2.5%.

Here at SolarQuotes, over the last few months we’ve been seeing approximately 14 – 15% of solar quote requests expressing an interest in a concurrent battery storage installation. So, while there’s significant interest (more than double in early 2020), no doubt many Australians suffer sticker shock when they find out how much solar batteries cost – particularly one with a decent amount of capacity. But it won’t always be that way.

In the meantime, if you’re considering storage as part of new solar installation, try SolarQuotes’ solar and battery calculator. It will show you the savings and payback of the solar and battery aspects separately. It’s also a handy tool for existing solar owners considering adding energy storage to see whether it will be worth it from a financial viewpoint.

Spoiler: it likely won’t be yet – the grid will remain the most economical battery in many situations for some time to come.

But the financial aspect isn’t the only reason Australians install batteries. Some want the reassurance of storage for blackout events, some feel they are “sticking it to the man” by depriving electricity retailers of their surplus solar electricity and mains grid consumption, and others just like to fiddle with the latest technology – like this guy:

Original Source: https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/solar-batteries-germany-mb1920/