Germany’s foray into home batteries pushes market to tipping point – report

The rapid spread of home batteries in Germany has brought the European residential storage market to an economic tipping point, according to a report by energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie. “Germany’s world-leading foray into the residential storage market has enabled Europe to claim the title of the largest residential storage market globally,” said researcher Rory McCarthy with reference to Germany’s “world-leading KfW support programme from way back in 2013.”

“Off the back of Germany’s success, residential storage is beginning to proliferate into other European countries,” McCarthy said. He added that Germany, Italy and Spain were moving towards grid parity for residential solar PV systems with a battery attached, meaning this combination is no longer more expensive than electricity from the grid. According to the analysis, residential storage will reach this tipping point in Italy by 2021 and in Germany by 2022, which will boost mass adoption of the technology. Annual deployments in Europe are set to more than double, reaching 0.5 GW/1.2 GWh by 2024, the consultancy forecasts.

Germany's rapidly rising share of weather-dependent renewable energy makes the country a testbed for storage technologies to enable its use when there is no sun or wind. Fuelled by massive price drops, the technology has begun to spread fast: The country commissioned its 100,000th home solar battery in late summer 2018.