The news has been flying thick and fast about Germany-based sonnen, maker of the sonnenBatterie “eco compact” energy storage system. Billing its technology as “the smart way to capture the sun,” sonnen seems determined to race neck and neck with Tesla to fill strong demand in the US for small scale batteries with slim, sleek silhouettes.
In the latest development, sonnen has just just announced the opening of a new manufacturing and R&D center in Atlanta, Georgia. So, why Atlanta?
Another New Innovation Hub For Atlanta
The new facility, dubbed the sonnen InnovationHub, will start churning out product in April.
As an R&D facility, the InnovationHub will ramp up sonnen’s US business, which is already growing at an “exponential” rate according to the company. Here’s a snippet from Christoph Ostermann, sonnen Group CEO:
We expect that linking our US manufacturing and R&D teams in one facility will increase the rate of product innovation, and enable us to better adapt to the future needs of the high-growth U.S. residential energy storage market.
Like Tesla, sonnenBatterie is based on lithium-ion technology. One difference is that sonnnen enables its customers to dip into the community aspect of small scale, distributed energy production and storage, paving the way for the “virtual power plant” of the future:
Through its sonnenCommunity, energy independent homeowners throughout Europe can produce, store and share their own electricity. sonnen’s latest developments, the sonnenFlat-Box, which connects non-solar customers to the sonnenCommunity and grid services, and the sonnenFlat tariff, which provides community members with energy at $0 for 10 years, are changing the way energy is used.
As for the choice of Atlanta, that’s a natural. Sonnen already has a foothold in California and when it went shopping for an east coast location, Atlanta’s Midtown Alliance probably caught its eye with pitches like this:
Vibrant. Innovative. Sustainable. A community at the epicenter of life and business, urban and natural, technology and culture. Home to the city’s premier green space, historic neighborhoods and Southern landmarks. This is Midtown Atlanta – in the heart of it all.
Midtown Atlanta’s Innovation District is already a hotspot for clean tech companies and other R&D, anchored by Georgia Tech University, so there’s that.
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