With energy storage deployments in the US up almost 50% year-on-year, according to GTM Research analysis, the next big question for the industry might be who gets to own all of the assets.
In the latest edition of PV Tech Power, Solar Media’s downstream tech journal for the global PV industry, Jigar Shah, clean energy entrepreneur and financier says in an interview that he expects 2018 to be a year that utilities in the US start to carve themselves a bigger stake in the nascent industry.
Speaking in the ‘Storage & Smart Power’ section of the journal, which is brought to you by the Energy-Storage.News team, Shah says that many utilities in the US, that were similarly sceptical on the potential of solar PV some years back before beginning a wave of deployments and acquisitions, are increasingly seeing the value of energy storage.
“Energy storage has broken through such that utilities [in the US] admit that their value is very high, at least to a 3.5% penetration,” Shah says in the interview.
“The fight now is really about who owns the storage – I am inclined to believe that the utility companies will win that battle.”
In solar, there was a long period – still extant in some states of the US – when utilities were often accused of trying to shut down the industry, particularly rooftop PV. Having seen their retail electricity business eroded and less and less customers fully reliant on the grid, utilities were often accused by the industry and advocates of lobbying against solar through self-interest. The picture is now rapidly changing, with major utilities such as Duke Energy and California’s main investor-owned utilities all prolifically deploying renewables.
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