SunEdison Buys SolarGrid, Becomes First To Offer Renewable Energy And Storage Solutions
In a forward-looking business decision to produce more cost-effective energy storage technology, largest renewable energy developer SunEdison has acquired energy storage firm SolarGrid. Initially a solar power generator, SunEdison can now sell energy storage services to utilities in US and Europe.
This move comes on the back of a recent successful purchase of First Wind, and makes it the first large US solar manufacturing company to offer battery storage solutions together with its solar and wind projects.
The 4 year old SolarGrid Storage LLC was in the business of integrating solar installations with lithium-ion battery systems. Incorporating energy storage will prove to have substantial immediate economic benefits for SunEdison, as new policies have been introduced in the US that mandates grid operators to pay more for services to make the grid run more reliably. For example, California passed a law in 2013 that requires the 3 big utilities to buy 1325 mW of energy storage service by 2020.
General Manger of SunEdison Tim Derrick has called this a “perfect complement”, to increase the value of their projects by “improving their availability and abilitiy to interact with the grid”. The company hopes to produce renewable energy projects of 2300 mW capacity this year.
If SunEdison is able to drive prices of energy storage down in the long term, the distributed solar markets could open up in a huge way.
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