“We’re appealing at this point to people who fall in love with the cool new technology.” In Massachusetts, there’s no program yet for the power companies to supply themselves from customer batteries, but “it’s still a beautiful, self-sufficient thing to make solar on your roof, store it locally, and use it,” says Rob Meyers of South Mountain Company, who uses Sonnen Eco 10 batteries in high-end solar designs for homes in Martha’s Vineyard, where power outages are not uncommon. will grow roughly 200-fold in the next five years, with costs coming down as electric cars spur major improvements in battery manufacturing. But GTM projects home battery storage in the U.S. electrical grid in 2016, according to industry analyst Brett Simon of GTM Research. Only about 900 home battery storage installations were connected to the U.S. Price does not include typical installation fees of $800 to $2,000. Homes with solar panels can use the Powerwall to store surplus power so it’s available when the sun isn’t shining. The second generation of the car company’s home battery packs a stackable 13.5 kWh of emergency backup to keep critical systems like a furnace, well, oxygen machine, refrigerator, and Internet going for days. “Even the customers who don’t add batteries benefit from lower electricity costs, because we have lower peak demand.” Green Mountain estimates its “virtual power plant” of 2,000 Powerwall units will be able to serve the equivalent of 7,500 homes during peak demand. “This technology benefits everyone,” says Green Mountain Power’s Kristin Carlson. Green Mountain Power, the largest power utility in Vermont, is discounting home battery systems for its customers because it also reserves the ability to remotely access the homeowner’s battery, drawing power back into the grid on hot summer days, when overall demand for power is high, and storing power in the home batteries of its customers overnight, when demand is low.
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