“We saw this massive gap in the market”: Interview with Bryan Liu, Zendure CEO, on plug-in storage

ESS News: Zendure has a special place in the balcony solar storage/plug-in storage market as a pioneer. Can you talk about how the company managed to be the first with a plug-in storage system? 

Bryan Liu: When we launched SolarFlow in 2023, the world’s first modular balcony energy storage system, we were essentially creating an entirely new product category from scratch, which naturally came with its own set of high stakes. At the time, balcony solar systems and plug-and-play microinverters were already gaining serious traction across Europe, but there was a glaring, unsolved pain point: people were generating all this free power during the day, but they had absolutely nowhere to store it for the evening. Traditional roof-mounted battery systems required complex technical retrofitting and expensive professional installation that most everyday households simply couldn’t accommodate or afford.

We saw this massive gap in the market and stepped in with an AC-coupled, modular balcony storage solution built on three uncompromising pillars.

First, it had to be completely retrofit-free, meaning it required zero modifications to a user’s existing solar setup, it simply plugged into a standard wall outlet and automatically began capturing surplus electricity.

Second, we designed it to have absolutely zero barrier to entry, making it 100% DIY-friendly so anyone could set it up safely without needing to hire an electrician.

Finally, we engineered it for seamless scalability, allowing users to effortlessly expand their storage capacity down the line by simply stacking additional battery packs together like building blocks.

However, pioneering a new category meant facing significant risks, and our absolute biggest hurdle was regulatory uncertainty. The power limits and safety regulations for balcony storage varied drastically across borders. For example, Germany strictly enforced an 800 W cap, while other European nations operated under completely different, and sometimes vague, rulebooks. The slightest misstep in our product definition could have triggered serious compliance issues and completely derailed the launch. To mitigate this risk, we decided not to just sit back and wait for the dust to settle. Instead, we invested a tremendous amount of time and resources into opening dialogues with regulatory bodies across multiple countries, advocating for clearer, more unified policies, and we actually took an active role in shaping the new industry standards in countries like the Netherlands and Hungary.

As for what we learned from this launch, the biggest takeaway completely shifted our company’s trajectory, balcony energy storage is not just a traditional, one-off hardware business. It is the ultimate gateway into comprehensive home energy management. We learned that the moment a user purchases their first device, they aren’t just completing a transaction, they are stepping into an ecosystem.

Once they see the value, they are highly likely to return to buy additional battery packs, subscribe to our dynamic energy pricing services, and eventually integrate their system with their heat pumps and EV chargers. Understanding this continuous, compounding repurchase logic fundamentally reshaped our entire business strategy. It taught us that we must obsessively prioritize the long-term user experience and ecosystem cohesion above all else, rather than competing solely in a short-sighted race to the bottom on price.

Q2. How did Zendure become successful?

We bet on the right category, and we named it. Plug-in HEMS is currently the only segment in European residential storage still growing in triple digits year on year. The share of new German balcony PV systems shipped with a battery has gone from near zero in 2023 to about half in 2025. We are the brand that defined this category, so we ride the front of that curve. The compounding curve. Five-year revenue CAGR is approximately 102%. Q1 2026 revenue is roughly +200% year on year. That is not a single-quarter spike, it is the category curve itself. We’re working with Han’s Laser to build a dedicated factory that will have an annual capacity of over one million units.

We have the complete product matrix in the industry. From balcony storage to full rooftop setups, our SKUs cover every price point and every possible use case. We have the complete product matrix in the industry. We actually hold the highest number of patents in this sector, with over 280. We handle full-stack, in-house R&D for our inverters, BMS (Battery Management System), and EMS (Energy Management System). We’ve also built an industry-exclusive, three-layer safety net that combines a dual-BMS architecture with active aerosol fire suppression. Following the strategic investment from Han’s Laser in 2025, our production lines scaled up to a million-unit annual capacity. That completely eliminated any supply chain bottlenecks we might have faced. 

Between 2023 and early 2026, we launched SolarFlow, SolarFlow Hub 2000, SolarFlow Hyper/Ace, SolarFlow 800/800 Plus, SolarFlow 800 Pro, and SolarFlow 2400 series, our SolarFlow series evolved Zendure from a hardware manufacturer into a complete smart energy ecosystem provider.

In April 2026, we took our biggest leap yet, launching flagships like the SolarFlow 4000 Mix Pro to graduate from balcony solar into full-scale residential energy storage. Alongside this, we rolled out HEMS 2.0, powered by our ZENKI AI. Backed by 200 billion real-world data points, it learns your habits, factors in dynamic pricing, and makes split-second energy decisions. To turn efficiency from HEMS 2.0 into actual income, we launched ZenWave. Europe’s dynamic energy prices fluctuate wildly, but day-trading electricity is too complex for the average family. ZenWave automates it. Through a monthly ZenWave SaaS subscription, our AI buys power when it’s cheap, uses it smartly, and sells it back to the grid when prices peak. It’s entirely hands-free. The numbers speak for themselves here. Recent consumer research in Germany showed that 79% of prospective energy storage buyers ultimately chose Zendure, our conversion drop-off rate is a mere 3%.

And at the same time, the geopolitical dynamics could be one of the factors to the instability in the energy supply in Europe, which underscores the importance of reliable storage solutions like ours.

Q3. What do customers say to you about opting to add plug-in storage to their balcony solar plants, or why they take up balcony solar+storage in the first place?

Based on our deep-dive market research across Germany, France, and the Netherlands, the reasons customers are flocking to the balcony solar and storage combination are incredibly consistent.

First and foremost, the primary driver is undeniable economic return, people simply want to take control of their soaring energy costs. To give you some context, 93% of our German solar users now own a storage device alongside their panels, and over a third of them told us their purchase was purely motivated by the desire to slash their electricity bills. This sentiment is echoed by prospective buyers as well. 54% of those who haven’t made the leap yet say reducing their monthly energy bill is the main reason they are looking into this technology. Ultimately, when it comes down to pulling the trigger, 48% of users tell us that a clear, fast Return on Investment (ROI) is the final deciding factor.

But while financial savings might spark their interest, the real ‘icebreaker’ that converts them from curious onlookers into actual customers is the sheer convenience of the setup. Over half of our users, 53% to be exact, highlighted hassle-free installation as the single biggest factor influencing their purchase. Historically, the biggest barrier to home energy storage was the nightmare of hiring expensive, specialized installers and dealing with complicated wiring. We completely shattered that barrier with our plug-and-play ecosystem. By empowering users to safely and easily install the system themselves right out of the box, we’ve removed the intimidation factor and made solar energy accessible to the everyday consumer.

This user-centric approach has deeply resonated with the market, and the feedback from our 2025 brand survey in Germany gave us some fantastic validation. A staggering 82% of users actively considered Zendure during their buying journey, which actually gives us a massive 46-percentage-point lead over our closest competitor. Even more importantly, they are associating our brand with the exact values we strive for. The ultimate proof of this satisfaction is in our customer stickiness, because our ecosystem is designed to be modular and grow with the user, we see a 35% repurchase rate within the first year, which skyrockets to 60% by year two as users expand their home setups.

To be completely transparent, however, the survey also gave us a candid look at a clear blind spot: our customer service. Currently, 69% of our users say they are willing to recommend us to others. While that’s a solid baseline, given our high brand loyalty and phenomenal repurchase rates, that metric should honestly be much higher. Right now, we are injecting heavy investments into upgrading our AI-driven customer service tools and drastically streamlining our human after-sales response times, with the strict goal of ensuring that our support experience matches the premium, seamless quality of our hardware.

Q4. Can you provide some data for readers to understand how many kW/kWh are being sold by Zendure across a month?

We estimate that Zendure delivers around 500 MWh of storage capacity annually, which averages to roughly 40 MWh per month. That said, monthly figures can be difficult to pin down precisely, as demand and installations fluctuate with seasonal solar yields and regional market dynamics.