Who has got the batteries?
Written by Leonardo Meeus
Local electricity storage in batteries is nothing new from a technical point of view. What is new, however, is for someone like Elon Musk to succeed in making home batteries trendy. His Powerwall wouldn’t be out of place in many a living room. Everyone with his or her own battery system! Do we want that? Or would we rather have a larger battery for the neighbourhood? That might be cheaper than 100 small ones. And if we are talking economies of scale, do we want the responsibility for the infrastructure to be in the hands of TSOs or DSOs or in the hands of market players? Each option has its supporters.
In Germany, anyone who installed solar panels up to recently was able to get subsidies for the purchase of batteries. In Italy, the TSO can invest in some installations and DSOs can also propose pilot projects, as in the UK.