a bmw billionaire backs batteries - residential energy storage

BMW's billionaire, Stefan Quandt, quietly put some of his money into a small company, allowing customers to store the power generated by solar panels in batteries.
Solarwatt has great ambitions with its peers.
Sonnbatterie, a competitor to a group of former employees
Tesla employees want to have more customers in 10 years than German utilities.
Last year's income was 15 million euros, twice that of last year, but it is still somewhat less than 112 billion euros.
Although these companies are small, the battery storage time is very long --
The long-term threat to German utilities is that the rise in renewable energy has led to a slump in wholesale electricity prices.
As this week's climate talks in Paris show, the shift to renewable energy will only accelerate.
The battery system allows customers to store electricity generated during the day when needed.
This allows families and businesses to reduce their dependence on the grid, or to disconnect from the grid one day.
Analysts at Morgan Stanley point out that with more doing so, the prices of the remaining customers may rise and encourage them to follow suit.
Until recently, this has not happened because of the high cost of energy storage.
Regulations are bad, there are a lot of U. S.
States do not provide incentives for customers to store energy rather than return it to the grid.
As a result, Germany may lead: it has more solar panels installed than any other country, and subsidies for returning unused solar power to the grid are declining, the domestic electricity bill is also relatively high.
According to data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, with the help of government subsidies, Germany sold 4,500 residential battery storage systems in the third quarter, more than double the same period last year.
Estimated end of BNEF-
By 2020, the number of users in Europe will increase to 2,320 MW, half of them from Germany.
Global, about 1. 1GW of energy-
Storage projects were announced in the first nine months of 2015, the most ever.
It's still a small amount--
Germany can generate power up to 193GW-
But look at what's happening with renewable energy.
On a sunny weekend last summer, renewable energy accounted for 78% of Germany's electricity production.
This technology may take advantage of existing utilities: it may not make sense for millions of consumers to have batteries at home
It turns out that scale storage projects are more economical.
Tesla, for example, is trying to integrate its fixed storage system with the solar and wind Power plants of Enel Green Power.
Storage may also help existing personnel balance the grid, which is increasingly subject to major fluctuations due to these unpredictable winds.
Even so, old-
The business of generating and delivering electricity from the central hub will shrink in a timely manner.
Investors have lower valuations for some utilities. -
Ten years ago, RWE was valued at 27 times its income, and today it was 8 times ---
This shows that they have to adapt as battery storage becomes more common.
Paradoxically, their future lies in helping customers reduce electricity consumption.
Contact the author of the story: Chris Bryant at cbryant32 @ Bloomberg in Frankfurt.
NetTo contacted the editor in charge of the story: Edward Evans of eevans3 @ bloomberg.