Kyocera Solar To Offer Stem Intelligent Energy Storage System
Solar power news keeps getting better. Stem and Kyocera Solar have joined forces to provide both solar panels and an intelligent energy storage system.
Stem says that up to 50% of an energy bill can be based on peak charges. The company’s advanced battery storage and predictive analytics help customers to avoid buying electricity when it is most costly.
The Stem system connects behind the meter to analyze energy usage and make beneficial predictions. It has an onsite battery that is charged with electricity when rates are at their lowest. That stored energy can be released when needed, so customers don’t have to buy during peak demand. Stem says its system can save 20% on energy bills.
Of course, Kyocera is a leading solar power photovoltaic modules and systems manufacturer, so it seems perfectly natural that it would join with an intelligent energy storage company.
“Intelligent energy storage is a natural fit for PV — and our solution integrates seamlessly with Kyocera’s solar technology to bring new value to the commercial market. Kyocera’s expertise in providing turnkey solutions through its technology partners presents a great opportunity for Stem as we expand our offering to solar customers,” explained Stem CEO John Carrington. Kyocera is the first solar power provider to offer the Stem system. It is now available to businesses in California, Hawaii and New York.
One of Stem’s customers is Alsco, a textile manufacturer with over 16,000 employees. After implementing the Stem system, Alsco began to reduce demand charges by about 8-10% per month. Another customer, Intercontinental Hotels, uses a Stem system to store energy and then release it to power elevators when they are in use during peak demand.
It probably isn’t surprising to anyone that commercial solar power is a huge market. According to SEIA, “As of mid-2013, cumulative commercial deployment totaled 3,380 MW at over 32,800 facilities throughout the country, an increase of more than 40 percent over last year.” We may be hearing about how many homeowners are ‘going solar’ but many businesses are too, and this trend is an important one.
Source: Solar Love. Reprinted with permission.
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Ugh. I really wish people would stop talking about storage for solar systems. It confuses people into thinking that batteries are needed (they are not, probably less than 2% of solar PV systems have batteries), it massively raises the prices of PV systems, and it makes people think solar PV is not as great as it really is. If people have extra money to spend, they should spend that money on more solar PV panels instead of on batteries! When we hit 30% penetration of solar PV systems, then start thinking about batteries.
I disagree. The articles that I´ve read don´t state that batteries are necessary and I´m pretty sure people know that you don´t need them as as you´re connected to the grid.
But on the other hand every installed battery system is great, since it helps bring down costs. We´re gonna need a lot of battery capacity soon and I mean utility scale.
totally agree, nothing beats solar panels
clean cheap and easy.
for houses cities communities companies to make money.
Either solar or batteries are not required. You could the batteries to offset the peak demand which is was mention of NPR.
Dairy farmers milk their cows during peak demand.
I think the picture of house is misleading.
Once again, deferral of demand to daylight hours is not discussed.
Storage heaters, well insulated food storage and buildings and larger insulated hot water tanks would do the job without big spending.
That depends on the business. Obviously for storage to make sense a business must have high demand (or time or use) charges that are not easily avoided without storage. Storage shouldn’t be the first option explored, but it should be on the list.
“When we hit 30% penetration of solar PV systems, then start thinking about batteries.”
Since it will take years of multiple billion dollar investments in solar and wind to do this, the resulting expenditures on storage will be a relatively small percentage of total clean energy investments. With deployment of big data toward predictive and integration strategies IMO, we will not need storage, beyond minute grid regulation requirements, until renewable penetration reaches 50%.
I would not include hydro, biomass, or geothermal in these totals since they accomplish what the older conceptions of dispatch-able and baseline power do, even better than thermal plants.
Curtailment and transmission improvements, much like they have been used for the past 132 years with fossil fuel generation, will be applied as well. California has quite a bit of a lead in solar, but it also has hydro that is available for storage and infill, which had formerly been used to integrate nuclear and to augment fossil fuel reserves.
Add in demand management plus newcomers to the demand side like EV’s and battery systems replacing gas and diesel generators traditionally used for emergency power, and the imminent (and expensive) use of mass storage may be pushed out farther and far less expensive than folks currently imagine. These elements will reshape the profiles of both loads and generation, with batteries very likely not taking a prominent role in any type of “load shifting” for a very very long time.