Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) has been the biggest global player in the nascent battery energy storage market in everything from residential to utility-scale projects. Its 129-megawatt-hour (MWh) project in Australia, which took less than 100 days to build, is currently the most public example of how energy storage can be deployed and create value in a short amount of time.

Partly because of Tesla’s success, companies from across the energy spectrum are eyeing the energy storage market. One that Tesla should fear is Fluence, the joint venture by Siemens (NASDAQOTH: SIEGY) and AES (NYSE: AES) that has leading energy storage technology and its own financing to build projects around the world.

The smart home was supposed to be big business by 2017, especially now that most Americans have smartphones in their pockets and millions of connected home devices like washing machines and thermostats have been sold. There’s been traction in voice-activated devices, but they’re not necessarily used to control smart devices in the home and are really built to be speakers and personal assistants than smart-home hubs. But with names like Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL), and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) leading the smart-home charge, it’s surprising the idea hasn’t gained more traction.

In 2018, there could be a new hub making its way to the market, and it could take the smart home to the next level in some locations. Don’t underestimate energy storage’s importance in the next generation of the smart home.

What is the smart-home hub?

One challenge is that different companies view the “smart home” differently. Amazon’s Alexa platform is the largest in the smart-home business, with millions of devices sold. It’s also a very open platform that can control thermostats, lights, and even locks with little more than your voice. But Alexa’s platform and APIs are built to connect people to a central hub that will interpret voice instructions, not to automate control of the home in a “smart” way.

The traditional utility business has been holding out hope that some form of new electricity generation would allow them to maintain their monopoly status without rocking the boat in the way wind and particularly solar could. As long as electricity generation is dominated by massive power plants, rather than small rooftop solar systems or on-site wind turbines, it will be simple to keep utilities as we know them profitable. 

Clean coal was a push in the industry for a while, but the $7.5 billion Kemper plant boondoggle by Southern Company (NYSE: SO) showed that it would never be economical. A nuclear renaissance has also been a dream for many utilities and investors, but costs have once again ballooned out of control. 

Southern Company’s expansion of the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant is billions of dollars over schedule and will be the cause of increased electricity rates in Georgia. In the last week, Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK) seems to have given up on its nuclear dreams entirely. The Lee Nuclear Station was abandoned by the company last week, a few years after the suspension of the Levy nuclear plant in Florida that resulted in about $1 billion in expenses that were charged to customers. What came next wasn’t another nuclear plant, but a proposal to build 700 MW of solar energy installations, 50 MW of energy storage, and 500 EV chargers as part of a $6 billion plan to upgrade the grid in Florida. Finally, utilities and regulators are seeing renewable energy and energy storage as an asset and abandoning risky energy sources that have been multibillion-dollar boondoggles for the industry. 

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The islands of Hawaii are known for their gorgeous landscapes and world famous beaches, but they’re probably not the first place you think of when you think of renewable energy. But they should be. 

Hawaii is the first state in the U.S. where rooftop solar has become an almost standard item on homes and businesses, something I personally witnesses recently driving around the islands of O’ahu and Kaua’i. Solar panels are also in places unthinkable in other locations. They face north, they’re covered by trees, and some look like they’re barely attached to the roof itself. But Hawaiians find solar to be so economical that almost all solar makes sense, and they are increasingly finding energy storage an economical solution as well. Understanding just how energy storage is working here can help us understand why companies are proving their technologies of the future on the Hawaiian Islands.