Dive Brief:
- ElectrIQ has become the latest company to offer a home energy storage solution, the IQ System home battery and software, which offers customers access to battery data, appliance usage stats and an overview of connected solar resources.
- “We’re taking an iPhone approach, where all of these different components are in one box," CEO Chadwick Manning told Greentech Media.
- The integrated software, monitoring setup and included DC-to-AC inverter mean the $16,000 retail price will likely be competitive with Tesla and others' storage solutions, which require additional components.
Dive Insight:
Greentech Media spoke with CEO Manning about the company's new storage offering and its quiet entrance into a space which is quickly being filled with names like Tesla, Sonnen, Sunverge and JLM Energy. ElectrIQ's advantage is in the bundled nature of its system, which the company chief said has attracted attention from solar installers looking to cut costs.
"We’re looking at the home as a microgrid ecosystem rather than component by component,” Manning said. The company can boast about 4,000 preorders, though its package isn't scheduled to roll out until the fourth quarter.
Based in San Leandro, Calif., the company was started by Manning and Jim Lovewell in late 2014.The company set up its first lab in Lovewell's garage where he had "amassed dozens of powerful batteries, inverters, solar panels and test equipment in an effort to speed the charging of his electric cars," according to the company's press materials.
Navigant Research, last year, called home battery storage "one of the fastest-growing markets for energy storage." The firm pegged the distributed energy storage system as an area of startling growth, with annual revenues expected to rise from $450 million last year more than $16.5 billion in 2024.
Omar Saadeh, a senior analyst at Greentech, told Utility Dive that "partnerships are flourishing in the North American residential solar-plus-storage market, and it’s becoming increasingly exciting. The barrier to this market has long been the high cost of the batteries," but that is changing quickly.
ElectrIQ's storage systems are expected out late this year, and GTM reports the company is looking to close a major funding round as well.
