Dive Brief:

• San Diego startup Orison announced yesterday that its residential, 2.2 kWh storage systems are now available for preorder on crowd-funding platform Kickstarter, and will come with built in demand management capabilities and require no special installation, PV Magazine reports. 
• The Orison Panel and Tower will both weigh less than 40 pounds, cost less than $2,000 and will begin working as soon as plugged in, storing energy during off-peak hours and discharging it when power is more expensive. 
• Orison joins SimpliPhi Power and Tesla in developing products for the home storage market. Tesla Chairman and CEO Elon Musk set the bar when his company announced a 7 kWh and 10 kWh home storage device last year.

Dive Insight:

Elon Musk's home storage announcements last year have set off a veritable space race for residential storage, with price and simplicity being the key factors. First Tesla announced its PowerWall system in May of last year, then SimpliPhi signaled it was developing its own system designed for homes and light commercial duty.

News of Orison's products broke last year as well, but now the company has moved to the production stage and needs to utilize Kickstarter to accelerate commercialization.

"We are excited to give all consumers options and ability to choose clean energy," Eric Clifton, Orison co-founder and CEO, said in a statement. "With Orison, we can enable a rapid shift to a clean energy grid while helping consumers use electricity at the optimal times without reducing quality or time of service."

Orison said the product will work by communicating with its cloud-based system, which uses deep-learning algorithms to automatically schedule the best times of use to power homes and businesses.

"The Orison Cloud pulls information such as utility rates, peak demand charges, weather, blackout alerts, local usage, as well as monitoring the health of the Orison units," the company said. The units can be controlled via a mobile app to see energy savings, and set the schedule times of charge and discharge if a specific need is desired.

"During a power outage, Orison provides immediate power while ensuring that none of the stored energy is sent back to the grid," the company said.

Unlike Tesla's storage offerings, Orison's products are designed to integrate easily into the home, requiring no installation. It is "the first energy storage product that is beautifully designed to be part of customer's daily life," Clifton said. Installation costs are not part of Tesla's price package, and can significantly boost the cost of battery storage overall. 

When powered by the grid, the Orison system stores energy when utility rates are low, and if connected to solar, Orison allows consumers to locally store the energy "so that it will not be sold at a loss to the utility. By localizing energy distribution, Orison helps to save money and reduce peak demand."