Distributed solar energy enters energy storage phase

Recently, Google announced its cooperation with Sunpower. At the same time, many mainstream American banks have begun to engage in solar financing. It is because of the participation of these mainstream financial institutions that the investment risk of solar energy is greatly reduced. US solar photovoltaic manufacturer SunPowerCEO, TomWerner, said in an interview with Australian media Reneweconomy "in the United States and Europe, if you pay attention to new energy, you will find that solar energy accounts for the largest proportion, and the mainstream of solar energy has come."

As an exhibitor at the 2014 Solar Conference and Exhibition in Australia, Werner stated that distributed solar power generation has matured and will soon enter the next phase of development, energy storage. SunPower will take the lead in implementing the application of solar energy storage technology in the Australian market and use it as the first pilot project for the company to move towards the home energy management system. In Werner's view, the ultimate goal of SunPower is to enable “the owner of a building, whether it is a residential building or a commercial building, will have no control over its own power and can fully control it.”

"Confusion and casualties": The future of distributed generation is undoubtedly the increasing popularity of rooftop solar power generation, coupled with energy storage technology, will pose challenges to the existing electricity market. "Taking the smartphone as an example, Apple's iPhone began to be popular around 2007. These products have been updated rapidly, from initial grounding to wireless to smart phones in just a few short years. The people will never admit the advantages of the new technology, but in the end it is still subverted," Werner said.

For solar energy, Werner is not sure how to develop in the future, but he pointed out that there will definitely be "chaos and casualties." Despite their own advantages, let them become subversive. However, Werner still frankly said: "This does not mean that we will not face challenges such as how to reduce the cost of solar photovoltaic power generation, and how to make power supply to meet market demand."

"Consumer benefits" is the value of market openness and fairness "Consumers should be the biggest winners of this competition." In Werner's view, consumers benefit is the purpose that this competition should really achieve, and consumer decisions will affect the whole Development policy. “For us, it is a good goal to be able to bring down the ever-increasing electricity bill in Australia, but the question is how to achieve this goal. With the declining cost of distributed solar power, I think that hindering the development of solar energy is not to allow It's a good idea to drop your electricity bill."

"Free Lunch": Charging Game between Solar and Grid Werner believes that the key to the so-called "free lunch" problem is how to make solar power production meet consumer demand. At present, it is unclear how such goals will be achieved in the United States or Australia. "The grid is certainly valuable, but I don't know exactly how much this value is." And for this problem, an extreme view of supporting solar energy would think that the transmission of solar energy should be free, while the other end thinks that solar energy Charges for using grid transmissions.

At present, it is difficult for both parties to reach an effective consensus on the issue of charges between photovoltaic power generation and the grid. For those who support solar energy, solar power has improved the performance of the power grid. However, grid operators do not agree with this statement. “The grid can really make distributed solar power lose its advantage through fare increase, but it doesn't make sense. In the next 5-10 years, the grid needs to learn to co-exist with distributed generation,” Werner said.

Energy Storage Batteries: The Potential of Subverting the Market The media has been speculating on Tesla’s Gigawatt Factory recently. Some personnel believe that this will give the solar industry a shock. In this regard, Werner also said that because of the existence of competition, the possibility of subversion is good. In terms of energy storage batteries, they hope to integrate “storage energy” into their entire solar energy system through competition. "Over the next five years, energy storage will be a very promising market. The entry of Tesla will drive other big companies, whether it be from South Korea, Germany or Japan," said Werner.

For Tesla, the move may be to reduce battery costs, so large-scale production like Tesla is a good thing for Werner and his company. Werner explained: "The current state of development in battery storage is like the way five years ago, photovoltaics, and only large-scale production can reduce costs. So we are also deploying large-scale production, so that the cost can quickly decline. ”

Concern about "soft costs" to reduce the cost of solar power generation In Werner's view, just talking about how to reduce the cost of solar panels is obviously not enough, but should promote the overall decline in the overall solar power system and soft costs. Especially in the field of distributed generation of personal power, "soft costs often exceed hard costs, so attention should not be solely directed to the solar power plant itself," he said.