The energy storage startup Swell Energy has launched an all-in-one home energy product it predicts will make residential storage more marketable and profitable.
Residential storage doesn’t make economic sense in most parts of the U.S. Hawaii has a self-consumption program designed to encourage battery adoption, California has a slew of state incentives, and a few utilities elsewhere have implemented residential demand charges and time-of-use rates. But in general, home storage is really just an emotional sell.
Venice-beach based Swell doesn’t make its own batteries. Rather, it packages ones made by partners LG Chem, Sonnen and Tesla. The newly announced EnergyShielddoesn’t bring new technology to the table, but instead innovates in the packaging and financing. The solar-plus-storage offering will play a pivotal role in Swell’s contract with Southern California Edison to deploy 20 megawatt-hours of storage across 3,000 homes for grid services.
The EnergyShield combines rooftop solar and lithium-ion batteries from its partners, plus an energy management system. There are certainly other companies offering solar products paired with storage products, but Swell says its system was built from the ground up with a focus on optimizing the battery.
Only a fraction of solar customers buy storage as well. Thus, storage often gets sold as a kind of add-on to a rooftop solar installation, rather than a piece of the whole system.
“Right now, storage is being sold electively,” said Suleman Khan, a managing partner at Swell. “Ours is a battery-centric product. We are selling a battery with enough PV to charge the battery and optimize your savings.”
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