“My home, my power plant”

German homeowners installed about 25,000 power storages in their houses in 2016, more than in any other European country, but the real boom of “decentralised power supply” might only start in 2020, Stefan Mayr writes in Süddeutsche Zeitung. 2020 will be the year in which many owners of Germany’s 1.6 million solar panels start losing guaranteed feed-in allowances from the state, which is going to make using power from the panels for themselves more profitable than selling it on the market, Mayr says. By connecting storages, owners can also trade power between each other, he adds. “The storages are going to become much cheaper,” Alex Melzer of start-up Zolar GmbH told the newspaper, arguing that many more homeowners will buy a solar panel and a storage “not because for ecologic-idealistic reasons but because it makes sense economically.”

Read the article in German here.

See the CLEW article Pilot project taps batteries & blockchain to iron out renewable power for more information.