Video: The US solar and storage “home energy evolution”

Residential solar and energy storage in the United States are increasingly being offered as a holistic home energy management system alongside features such as EV charging, grid demand-response tools, smart thermostats, and more.

How is the industry serving customers today? How are policies, technologies, and economic conditions shaping distributed solar and energy storage? Those questions are addressed in the video below.

A panel discussion held as part of the pv magazine USA Week event included policy and incentive database provider NC Clean Energy Technology Center, distributed-solar operator EnergySage, home energy storage provider Briggs & Stratton, and residential solar installer Sunnova Energy.

The panel discussed market trends and major policy changes to be aware of and traced the evolution of solar-plus-storage. Watch the full video below.

Quotes from the discussion included, in response to recent solar installer bankruptcies, “When I think about the three legs of the stool, what will support this industry, you have finance, technology, and policy, said Meghan Nutting, executive vice president of government and regulatory affairs at Sunnova. “When we have state policies that undermine the growth of the industry then the industry is going to be challenged.”

On macroeconomic conditions, “Just two years ago, the median interest rate included in loans on Energysage was under 3% whereas in the first half of this year, it was over 7.5%,” said Spencer Fields, director of insights at EnergySage. “So, the Fed [US central bank the Federal Reserve] rate cut, we anticipate, will make a huge difference here.”

On promising policies, “Probably the biggest bright spot we’re seeing is the Solar For All program,” said Autumn Proudlove, managing director for policy and markets at the NC Clean Energy Technology Center. “This is a $7 billion, five-year program through [the] EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] that’s focused on solar for low-income customers, that will largely be implemented by states. A minimum of 75% of that $7 billion will go toward solar for low-income and disadvantaged households.”

On operating off-grid, “There are people who truly live beyond the transmission line, or they’re ‘edge-of-grid,’ and power outages are very frequent,” said Sequoya Cross, vice president of energy storage at Briggs & Stratton. “They turn to battery storage not necessarily for incentive purposes but because they need energy in their home. Storage is a way to combat an aging infrastructure. I think this idea of being off-grid is more an idea of being grid-independent or looking at a way to be more self-sufficient.”

Watch the full panel discussion below, from hour 1:16 to 2:14

From pv magazine USA.