Kyocera Aiming To Double US Solar Presence
Originally published on Solar Love.
Kyocera wants to expand its sales in the United States, and sees opportunities in the residential solar and energy storage markets.
Sales for the company fell recently in Japan, forcing the company to look at expanding into the United States. “There is growing need for energy storage in the US residential market,” said Kyocera president Goro Yamaguchi .
Kyocera has already partnered with the American energy storage company Stem, with the collaboration focused on commercial systems, but Kyocera has also entered the German solar power market to support residential systems. 4.8kWh and 7.2kWh energy storage systems were intended for the German residential market, so it is not unreasonable to wonder if these sizes will be available when Kyocera hits the US market. Just for comparison, the Tesla energy storage systems for homes are 7 Kwh and 10 Kwh, and they are definitely competitively priced.
One report said Kyocera might target 100,000 energy storage systems for the US market, because that is the number it worked with in Japan. One might imagine California would be a good place to start trying to sell home energy systems, because it is a leading solar state.
Kyocera also might bundle solar power and energy storage systems, which would probably be smart — consumers generally like convenience. Having one system to install that would cover all electricity needs would be easier than mixing and matching different systems.
At the same time, Tesla might partner with SolarCity or another American solar power company like SunPower to offer its own bundled system.
Either way, it will be fascinating to see what happens. Even more intriguing is the coming expansion of electric vehicles, and how they will interact with energy storage and solar power systems. For example, if you own all three, you might be able to charge the batteries fully at night when rates are low, and sell electricity back to the grid during peak times during daylight hours. Of course, you could also use your home solar system to charge batteries too. What would a payback period look like then? The environmental aspects of this situation are only one part of the equation.
Image Credit: Kyocera
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For the average or rather vast majority of consumers, the environmental aspect is irrelevant. A few green, early adopters care about the environment. The rest only care about green money and the financial case. Utility rates and regulators need to provide a financial incentive and motivation for grid value added; without proven value to the grid in a particular region, storage will struggle to make inroads until a certain price point is reached or the value assigned to storage increases.
Storage for fast chargers becomes distributed storage.
Kyocera has a long presence in Vancouver Washington and seems to have plans to expand. There are currently special incentives in Washington State for solar panels and equipment made and installed instate.