Are we in the midst of a home battery shortage, since they became popular so quickly? Can customers obtain an affordable energy storage system to prepare for an outage?
Ipsun Power’s CEO was quoted in the U.S. News World Report after an interview about the current state of the U.S. solar and battery market. Herve Billet has been quoted in other news media before, helping Ipsun Solar raise its profile as a carbon-neutral, Angies’ List service awarded, B Corporation.
Prices go up due to production constraints
Herve Billiet specifically talked about pricing dynamics for battery and solar panel products in a recent presentation:
A spate of new factories being built should alleviate the supply crunch, analysts say. Bloomberg last year predicted that global battery production would double by 2021. The current constraints, however, are already having an impact: One installer says the scarcity has driven up the price of an average battery system from a low of about $9,000 to roughly $11,000.
“They simply ran out of batteries and the price went up,” says Herve Billiet, CEO of Ipsun Power, a solar and battery installer based in the nation’s capital.
These dynamics will continue
The price tag for batteries still remains much smaller than even five years ago. That’s a big factor behind the recent storage boom in residential markets, but not the only one.
The average cost of installing rooftop solar is 40 percent cheaper than it was five years ago. It’s nearly 60 percent cheaper than in 2010, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. This is making the prospect of recouping the cost of a combined solar-plus-storage system much better.
