In mid-2017, IKEA announced that it would be ‘launching’ a battery storage offering to sell alongside its solar panels in the UK. The week previous to this announcement, Siemens – another household name – announced that it would be joining forces with AES to create Fluence, a company focusing on the global energy storage industry.
The press release by IKEA was viewed by many in the industry as a big deal, with many excited that such a well-known consumer brand could be ready to push storage into the UK market.
But in a world where energy storage will play an increasingly important role – in balancing renewables, reinforcing the network, and reducing energy costs – how important will ‘brand’ be?
Brand will be important for the following three reasons:
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Confidence in the product is paramount to protect a well-known brand:
Despite the fanfare around the announcement, storage and PV wasn’t a completely new offering for IKEA. The company had been offering storage with its PV systems for some time to any customers who requested it. The company had been soft trialling the products for a while before making any big announcement. The IKEA brand has been built up over more than 70 years and companies of this size and heritage don’t risk it over what will be initially an extremely niche offering (IKEA sells one of its BILLY bookshelves every three seconds with one-tenth of furniture purchased in Britain coming from IKEA).
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