California’s wildfires may be the best thing to happen to home batteries

Posted on by gvinski

A true-color version of the Landsat image, providing a view of the fire and the state of the surrounding vegetation in the visible wavelengths.

“California’s wildfires appear to be supercharging a national trend. Solar installers are now retooling as battery installers.

“The market for residential batteries remains is small — only a few hundred megawatt-hours were installed in 2018. But it’s growing tenfold year-over-year, reports Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables. Home solar company Sunrun has installed 5,000 of its Brightbox systems — solar panels and lithium-ion batteries with eight to 12 hours of backup power — in the US and expects sales to double this year. “We are seeing increased consumer awareness of outages due to [the California] wildfires and receiving more questions from customers about home batteries,” said spokesperson Georgia Dempsey of Sunrun.”

FULL STORY published June 7, 2019 via Quartz

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