Editor’s note: More than beer is brewing in Germany. This battery manufacturer has suggestions for microgrid designers, such as making conventional electricity suppliers obsolete by letting grid members share their self-generated power. (Knock, knock. May I borrow a few kilowatt-hours?)
Can communities become their own utility? Sonnenbattery thinks they can. That enclosure between the guys is one sonnenbattery.
Sonnenbatterie presents the sonnenCommunity in which members can generate their own power, store it, and share surpluses online with friends and each other. The sonnenCommunity, they suggest, completely replaces traditional power companies and will soon be available to every household in Germany.
- sonnenCommunity is the first community of producers, consumers and storage operators who can supply each other with self-generated electricity.
- sonnenCommunity members are independent of the established electricity providers.
- Members have significantly lower energy costs thanks to the efficiently controlled, decentralized self-supply of electricity.
- sonnenCommunity members gain affordable access to intelligent storage technology as well as to surplus electricity.
- The sonnenCommunity actively prevents costly grid expansion through direct marketing of renewable energy even in small residential systems.Every household in Germany can join the sonnenCommunity, a community that connects all energy producers and consumers, letting them supply one another with renewable energy and making a traditional power company unnecessary.”With the sonnenCommunity, we offer all households that want to determine their own energy future access to affordable, clean electricity for the first time,” says Christoph Ostermann, CEO of Sonnenbatterie.
SonnenCommunity consists primarily of homeowners with a photovoltaic system and a sonnenBatterie that stores surplus power. Members of the community can purchase the intelligent sonnenBatterie storage system exclusively starting at €3,599 (incl. VAT).
Surplus electricity that can’t be consumed or stored is shared online with the sonnenCommunity and thereby made available to members who need power. In addition to the favorable purchase price of a battery storage device, members with a sonnenBatterie also have additional advantages: they can direct-market their surplus electricity with an additional profit to the feed-in-tariff and pay a price significantly below the average of traditional suppliers for electricity they don’t produce themselves.
The sonnenCommunity combines three technologies: decentralized power generation, advanced battery storage technology and digital networking. Control is assumed by a powerful, self-learning software platform that connects the individual members of the community.
By monitoring the production and consumption data of the members in real time the platform balances supply and demand. Combining weather and member consumption data creates the basis for a precise prognosis for the expected production and demand within the sonnenCommunity. The cyclical energy input from renewable sources thus becomes calculable and can be flexibly integrated.
In addition, sonnenCommunity members can participate in innovative business models for the provision of balance energy and thus profit from further economic advantages such as, for example, free access to surplus electricity from the grid.
Even households without the ability to generate their own power or without their own battery storage device can obtain electricity from the community. Those interested in the sonnenCommunity can put together a customized tariff package on the website and register immediately.
As part of the expansion of the business model, Sonnenbatterie GmbH will be renamed sonnen GmbH. Sonnen is the umbrella brand for the intelligent battery storage system sonnenBatterie and the networked electricity community sonnenCommunity.
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