A German solar battery startup comes to America

A German company has engineered a lithium-ion battery system with wireless communication to enable homeowners to manage their solar electricity generation and use and control appliances.



The growth of solar panels installed on the rooftops of homes and businesses is paving a way for startups to make and create services from energy storage technology. A German startup, PROSOL Invest Deutschland, has developed a lithium-ion battery system that comes with wireless communication to control home appliances.

The company, founded in 2010, made its way to its first U.S. solar trade show, Intersolar in San Francisco, earlier this month, and attracted ample attention from attendees, some of whom noted that they couldn’t find similar technology unless they custom-build it themselves. The company has sold over 1,200 of its battery systems in Germany, Austria and Switzerland since 2011 through distributors and integrators such as Kyocera Solar and E.ON.



“It’s not just a backup power system, but a smart system for the home,” Christoph Ostermann, CEO of PROSOL, told us.

Energy storage promises to give increased flexibility to home and business owners who are using solar power on their rooftops. They can bank solar electricity for when they are not using it and then use that saved energy at night. They also can send power to the grid to take advantage of any incentives from their utilities.

PROSOL is part of a growing number of companies that design battery systems to be paired with grid-connected solar energy systems. The number of solar manufactures and installers who market and install both solar and energy storage is on the rise, and includes SolarCity and SunPower. Still, the solar-and-storage pairing isn’t common yet partly because a battery system tends to be expensive.

A PROSOL system, which is designed to pair with an array of solar panels, is a cabinet containing a bank of lithium-ion iron phosphate batteries, an inverter to convert DC power to AC and vice versa, a battery management system and a communication control panel that talks to appliances that are connected to a Z-Wave plug. A 7-inch touch screen on the door of the cabinet displays solar energy production and home energy consumption.



The startup’s core expertise lies in the software and controllers for controlling and monitoring the batteries and the engineering of the wires and cables in the cabinet to make it easy to install.

The current system is designed to control up to three home appliances with a mobile app, which also shows home energy use and making it not just a place to store solar electricity but a home energy command central. The idea is similar to what Nest and other companies have been working on to control heating, cooling and other home devices to use electricity more efficiently.

The battery system can control home appliances, and it’s developing software for controlling heating and lighting systems. The company’s energy storage systems come in different battery capacities for residential and business customers. It’s targeting the residential market with a 10 kWh system, for which it charges $18,000. A 60 kWh system costs $75,000.

Given that batteries remain expensive, their use as solar energy storage won’t become widespread without government incentives. The German government started an energy storage incentive program in May that offers rebates to offset 30 percent of the price of a system and low-interest loans for installing both solar panels and energy storage, or for adding storage to an existing set of solar panels.

Japan also put an energy storage rebate program in place, along with its renewable energy subsidies, after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011.

California passed a law in 2010 to investigate the use of energy storage to complement the increasing amount of solar and wind power generation. Last month, the California Public Utilities Commission proposed to require the state’s top three utilities to sign contracts to collectively buy 1.3 GW of energy storage from 2014 through 2020.

More on the Energy Storage System:  Sonnen Batterie

Source: GIGAOM

ABB Buys Power-One for $1 Billion to Add Solar Inverters

ABB Ltd. (ABBN) agreed to acquire Power- One Inc. (PWER) for about $1 billion, giving the world’s biggest electricity-networks builder inverters that allow solar power to be fed into grids.

Shareholders of the Camarillo, California-based company will get $6.35 a share, Switzerland’s ABB said in a statement today. Power-One shares surged as much as 59 percent to the equivalent of $6.34 in German trading today.




ABB is looking to tap a market forecast to grow by more than ten percent annually, driven by a need for affordable energy and declining costs of producing solar power. The 7.7 times Ebitda that ABB is paying for Power-One is lower than the median multiple of 8.5 paid for alternate energy companies in the last three years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

ABB Chief Executive Officer Joe Hogan said there is some risk in buying Power-One amid a “tumultous market” for renewable energies like solar and wind power. He predicts the bet to pay off as the cost of producing solar energy is moving towards the price of purchasing power from the grid.

“If you wait in this industry until it’s very clear what it’s going to look like, you are not going to be paying the multiples that we are paying here today,” Hogan said on a conference call.
‘Smart Move’

Power-One generated earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $120 million last year from sales of its inverters used in commercial and residential photovoltaic or PV systems, ABB said in a statement. The company will be integrated into ABB’s Discrete Automation and Motion unit which produces robots, motors and drives.

“We consider the acquisition of Power-One as a smart strategic move for ABB to broaden its solar product portfolio at the right time,” said Takis Spiliopoulos, an analyst at Bank Vontobel AG in Zurich. The purchase premium is acceptable given Power-One’s net cash position of $266 million, he said.

The boards of both ABB and Power-One approved the transaction.

In U.S. trading, Power-One had dropped 1.7 percent this year before today. ABB rose 1.2 percent to 20.16 francs as of 11:04 a.m. in Zurich, valuing the company at 46.7 billion francs ($50 billion).

Power-One’s inverters this year began operation at a solar power plant installed in the Atacama desert for the Chilean fruit exporter Subsole, which was seeking to escape high energy prices supplied from the nation’s conventional grid.

More Deals

Power-One is the latest bite-sized acquisition by Hogan as he looks to bring new technology to the Swiss company’s portfolio. Solar inverters convert the direct current generated by solar panels into the alternative current needed to run appliances on power grids.

Hogan did not rule out more deals which would build on ABB’s position in solar.

“I can’t say if it’s the last one we will do. You won’t see us ever do a solar panel deal,” he said on the conference call, adding that ABB wouldn’t consider buying into machinery used to maker solar panels as it’s not an area of expertise.

The purchase also contrasts with a retreat from the solar- equipment market by competitor Siemens AG. The Munich-based company is selling its solar-energy unit, expanded by the takeovers of Archimede Solar Energy and Solel Solar Systems, after deteriorating prices for photovoltaic equipment.

ABB is structuring the transaction as a merger and the Zurich-based company has the backing of investment funds affiliated with Silver Lake Sumeru, it said. Credit Suisse Group AG advised ABB, with Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP providing legal help. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. advised Power- One, along with legal firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.



Source: Bloomberg