Sonnenbatterrie – Germany’s market-leading residential energy storage system maker – is to enter the UK residential energy storage market with its lithium-ion storage system.
Sonnenbatterrie has now signed an agreement with UK-based energy storage system provider Green Acorn to act as the first ‘Sonnenbatterie Centre’ in the UK, serving the south west and Scotland.
Benjamin Schott, director of business development at Sonnenbatterie, said the two firms are in a trial phase this year with plans to go commercial by the beginning of 2016. Sonnenbatterie’s strategy is to have an exclusive agreement with local installers to sell, install and service the systems when required.
The German firm’s entrance into the UK, where there are an estimated 750,000 PV systems installed on domestic rooftops, comes after the the Dept for Energy (DECC) announced cuts to Feed-in-Tariffs (FiTs) of as much as 87% in January 2016.
While the announcement has caused widespread disruption in the UK PV industry, it has also been touted as a potential opportunity for the energy storage market. Without FiTs giving strong incentives to export solar power back into the grid, it makes sense to maximise self-consumption of solar and this can be achieved through retrofitting with storage, said Schott.
For new PV installations, combining with storage now becomes a method of saving money, rather than generating attractive returns while under the original FiT model – if the FiT cuts go ahead, as widely expected.
Sonnenbatterie, which was established in 2010, is currently one of the leading residential energy storage companies in Europe. It has installed more than 8,300 lithium-ion based battery systems in Germany alone, giving it around a 40% market share.
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