The list of automakers entering the market for stationary energy storage seems to get longer by the day.
The most recent entry is Daimler, the German manufacturer of Mercedes-Benz autos, which in November launched a separate unit, Mercedes-Benz Energy Americas, that plans to begin selling its stationary storage products to residential, commercial and utility consumers this year.
With its new North American business unit, Daimler is looking to leverage the entry it made into stationary storage in 2015 with its Deutsche ACCUmotive unit. In fact, in April 2016, Daimler spun off Mercedes-Benz Energy GmbH from ACCUmotive in order to concentrate on energy storage applications.
The new unit will have plenty of competition. Daimler joins BMW, Nissan, Tesla and VW, which have also all entered the market for stationary energy storage.
All of those companies have at least two concerns that are driving their interest in storage: What to do with batteries that are no longer useful in an electric vehicle but still have plenty of useful life left in them? How do they improve the economies of battery manufacturing and drive down costs?
Stationary storage presents possible answers to both questions by opening up new markets for new batteries and for recycled or repurposed batteries.
The underlying theme is how to make the most of an asset—in this case the battery in an electric car—which can serve more than one use.
That is a theme touched on by Boris von Bormann, the new head of Mercedes-Benz Energy Americas, in an interview with Utility Dive. “How do we use the car’s capacity that is driving around? How do we monetize it in the energy markets? How do we make it available to the grid operator, a utility, a city?”
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