Intersolar 2026: Fox ESS bets on bigger home batteries as C&I push gains ground

Fox ESS was ranked No. 1 globally in residential energy storage for 2025 by S&P Global Energy, and No. 1 in Germany specifically. Do you have any early indication of how 2026 is tracking?

Christoph Schön: As equipment provider for all residential and C&I segments, we see increased demand for small and large solutions. Nevertheless, the core residential market of hybrid storage systems with 10 kW and above, we see continuous growth.

This is not necessarily representing the market demand, but the market development. We expect continued growth across all our key markets. In customer feedback and brand momentum, the signal is very positive, we are reaching a next growth phase, and we see consistently strong satisfaction and engagement with customers. On that basis, we remain confident in 2026’s trajectory.

Your “360 Solutions” concept combines balcony solar through heat pump in a single cloud platform. How does that work technically?

The concept is a true 360-degree energy solution, covering everything from a balcony solar setup to a full stack residential energy solution, supported by cloud intelligence. Technically, the idea is to deliver a complete, end-to-end system across solar, storage, heating via heat pump integration, and EV charging, all connected through a single energy-management platform. The cloud continuously analyzes, optimizes, and coordinates performance across components, and scales as storage capacity increases, so customers gain efficiency and flexibility as their system grows.

Our Fox ESS HP-Series heat pump opens the heating and cooling world to our customers. With R290 as refrigerant, this A+++ efficiency rated heat pump keeps your house always at the right temperature. Low noise level and preconfigured indoor cabinets help to find the right installation place and safe installation time.

You mentioned AI integration – where does that stand today?

Our first AI-enabled version is already live. We have more than 500 systems running in the Netherlands with fully integrated AI support.

Going forward, the priority is to move beyond “AI features” and enable AI-driven management and communication across the entire portfolio, optimizing energy usage end-to-end. Looking ahead, a major customer-facing shift will be the move toward AI-managed, 360-degree energy systems that can also coordinate EV charging and heating solutions alongside stationary storage.

We will add a Smart EEG mode, to especially support systems in Germany, installed under the EEG subsidy scheme and supporting dynamic tariffs.

The German residential storage market added a record 2.2 GWh of capacity in the first quarter of 2026, with total power capacity expected to roughly double this year. How is Fox ESS positioning as the market shifts from self-consumption optimization toward resilience and grid stability?

Our DNA is manufacturing-first – we build products, and scale them quickly. Residential remains our backbone, because it delivers the experience and solution our customers want.

At the same time, we see clear demand expansion in the C&I sector – especially where resilience and backup are essential. We therefore develop dedicated C&I offerings, starting with proven quality and complete solutions. For C&I, our focus is on high-performance architectures such as G-Max Plus, and we are already scaling to meet this demand across Europe.

Fox ESS products are best friends with EMS integrations from us and other suppliers, to always meet the continuously changing demand.

What does “the bigger the better” mean in practice for Fox ESS’s view of residential storage sizing – what battery sizes are installers specifying today compared to two or three years ago?

Compared to one to two years ago, when many installations were effectively constrained by cost pressure around smaller sizes – we now see a clear change in installer and homeowner expectations.

For the future, we believe typical residential systems should support higher integration needs: heat pumps, EV charging, and AI-based energy optimization. In practice, that means proceeding from the 10 kWh class as the default, targeting on ranges of 20 kWh to 30 kWh packaged in safe, reliable and easy to install formats.

What would you say installers and distributors should be paying close attention to now?

AI will scale extremely fast, and customers will increasingly expect real energy management, not only installation.

So we encourage installers and distributors to understand the full solution, especially the cloud and AI value: how it manages energy across components, how it can improve outcomes for the customer, and how to translate that into customer benefits. Installation is designed to be straightforward and stackable, but the communication and guidance must evolve so consumers understand what they can gain from AI and 360-degree optimization.

On the C&I side, what specific market segments or applications is Fox ESS targeting as it scales beyond residential?

Our approach is simple: we provide new C&I solutions, and we are not simply converting older equipment to C&I with marketing. We are developing dedicated solutions for C&I applications based on performance and practical deployment needs, starting with customer value and then scaling. Continuously developing the EMS capabilities beyond own-consumption and peak-shifting to cover new use cases, like VPPs, Time-Shift-Energy and dynamic pricing solutions.