Household energy storage competition landscape

What is a residential energy storage system?

Residential energy storage systems integrate various components including battery cells, modules, power conversion systems (PCS), software i.e., battery management systems (BMS) and energy management systems (EMS), and other balance of plant items.

How did residential batteries gain access to the grid services market?

In Italy, residential batteries gained access to the grid services market through the launch of the Virtually Aggregated Mixed Units (UVAM) pilot project in November 2018.

What are residential storage product features?

Residential storage product features depend significantly on the markets they are being sold in (Table 4). Providers typically offer much larger entry-level systems in the US and Australia, where the energy demand and typical customer-sited solar system size of an average home is larger than in Europe.

Should residential storage providers invest in aggregation & energy trading?

The downstream areas of the value chain, such as aggregation and energy trading, remain a focus area for these residential storage providers looking to grow their business and extract value. Investments tend to be focused in this area, and storage providers without these capabilities are increasingly acquiring them.

How are solar exports compensated under NEM 3?

Under NEM 3.0, solar exports are compensated at the “avoided cost”, or ACC, which represents the long-term hourly value of a distributed energy resource (DER) for the utility grid, measured in $/kWh. The California Public Utilities Commission calculates these values every year.

Do residential batteries play a role in the capacity market?

Participation of residential batteries in the capacity market is typically led by retailers with large virtual power plant portfolios. These are mainly for demand response, where residential batteries play a small part.