Europe and Australia: Full power access without the grid
Stand-alone solutions still have the image of being only a “first aid” not only for off-grid customers: also governments, investors, power companies, banks see the stand-alone technique more as a temporary solution. The large capital flows go to network-based technologies. At most, the micro-grid is still accepted as “little brother”.
New technology developments in Europe and Australia
A change in this attitude that the grid or micro-grid provides the only solution for a modern power supply will come ultimately again from the technically developed countries: in Europe and Australia solutions are increasingly being implemented to make households and businesses independent from the public power grid.
Triggered by the dissemination of LiFePO4 batteries, more and more companies arise focusing on the offer of “solar plus storage” – and therefore advertising that households and companies can make themselves completely independent from the grid.
- In Australia the Solar-Plus-Storage market is growing significantly. For households it became a sign of modernity to go off-grid and just rely on a personal in-house-solution for power. Studies forecast that by 2018 half of the local households will have said goodbye to the power grid and will have gone off -grid.
- In Europe so called “solar-rooftop-systems” provide reliable and affordable power for companies, while “Solar-plus-storage-systems” offer households the opportunity to become grid independent. Lot of utilities propose their customers to install a “Solar-plus-storage-system” and use the grid just as a backup. The reason: Solar power is cheaper.
- And even in the US, the first power utility has created an offer for their customers to go completely off the grid. Despite Trumps’ decision that the US has to start a march backwards into the 20th century of energy supply
New business segments in countries with off-grid and unreliable grid market
The grid, with its large central power plants, is outdated technology of the 20th century. Independent, decentralized power supply units are power supply of the 21th century.
Europe and Australia today are the leaders in this new type of technology which brings off-grid and grid customers together: building a new market for reliable decentralized power supply with solar energy.
Consequences for Sun-Connect News
As a consequence of this development Sun-Connect News in future also provides information, articles and news from the leading “solar-plus-storage” countries: Australia and Germany are now part of the country database. More countries will follow soon.
Source
Harald Schützeichel is Editor of Sun-Connect News
