Dive Brief:
- Borrego Solar Systems has launched a new division focused on megawatt-scale energy storage solutions, both stand-alone and tied to solar installations.
- It is the company's first expansion beyond solar PV; Borrego has more than 260 MW in operation and 100 MW under construction.
- The new storage division will be based in Massachusetts and will serve customers nationally. It will be led by Borrego Solar’s executive vice president of strategy and business development, Dan Berwick.
Dive Insight:
The combination of battery storage and solar is beginning to take off, and project developers are working to position themselves for more installations. Borrego's new division recalls Tesla's acquisition of SolarCity, announced this summer, but on a smaller scale.
Borrego will focus on long-duration energy storage, which officials say is necessary to integrate renewables into the grid.
“We’re realizing that all across our customer base—from cities, school districts and public agencies to businesses, manufacturers and electric utilities—it is more frequently making economic sense to evaluate energy storage in conjunction with solar,” said Berwick. “We knew that this technology shift was around the corner."
Borrego's storage unit will spend the next year focusing on developing megawatt-scale projects with utilities across the United States. "It’s something that our customers, electricity regulators and policymakers are asking for," said Borrego Solar CEO Mike Hall."
While Tesla has many residential offerings, the deal with SolarCity may yield even greater value in the utility sector. Last summer, Tesla founder Elon Musk told the annual convention of the Edison Electric Institute that he anticipates the utility-scale Powerpack storage product will comprise between 90% and 95% of Tesla’s total stationary storage sales.
On the residential side, Navigant has forecasted the 2025 North American market for residential solar PV plus energy storage nanogrids to be over 1.8 GW, with 30% to 40% of those nanogrids aggregated into virtual power plants. The use of solar and storage together in nanogrids is expected to continue expanding, leading to “new organized markets for ancillary services and efforts by utilities and grid operators alike to manage increased DER portfolios in ways that capture value upstream.”
