Enphase’s current growth is based around its core solar microinverter business. But in discussing the company’s Q3 earnings Tuesday, CEO Badri Kothandaraman focused on how Enphase’s soon-to-launch integrated energy storage system could aid Californians facing the state’s unfolding wildfire and grid blackout emergency.
California-based Enphase is far from the only residential solar equipment provider adding batteries to the rooftop PV proposition. Sunrun, the U.S. rooftop solar leader, says that a quarter of its California solar customers are now choosing to add batteries to their systems.
While Kothandaraman declined to predict how many battery-backed Ensemble systems the company will sell, he expects similar “attach rates” to those seen by Sunrun in the California market.
The demand for solar-battery backup systems could skyrocket, Kothandaraman said, with millions of Californians undergoing days-long blackouts this month under the expanded fire-prevention power outage regime of bankrupt utility Pacific Gas & Electric.
“The blackouts in California will only increase the attach rates for storage,” he said.
Many Enphase employees live in the same PG&E territory now facing evacuations from the Kincade Fire or lengthy power outages meant to prevent more fires from starting.
“Storage has a massive potential for [Enphase],” Kothandaraman said. “It takes us from $2,000 a home to $10,000 a home” in terms of revenue per installation, he said.
“Ensemble is a technology that brings together solar, storage, inverters and even a generator on a single technology platform to keep a home’s [power] always on.”
Solar-storage systems aren’t capable of keeping most homes fully powered for more than an hour or two, leaving it up to homeowners to decide on critical loads and manage battery life to match the duration of their outage. But the Ensemble system is preconfigured to manage these complex balancing tasks, Kothandaraman said — something not all systems built from disparate parts can claim.
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