The value of energy resiliency is increasing in the face of stronger weather events and natural disasters, and the electrical grid isn’t always prepared to withstand these adverse environmental pressures. Rex Liu, VP of product management, clean energy, at Generac, is on this episode of Solar Spotlight to share how residential solar customers can keep ample backup energy to power everything necessary during a grid outage.
A written portion of this podcast is below but be sure to listen to the full episode on your preferred podcast service.
SPW: Can you tell us about Generac, its role in the clean energy space and its evolution as an energy technology?
Rex Liu, VP of product management, clean energy, Generac
Liu: Generac is obviously best known for our long-standing position as a resiliency provider. And what most of your listeners probably associate our brand name with is generators. But what people may not know about Generac is part of our focus has been to provide more efficient and sustainable energy for our customers, and we do that with our generators, but we’re increasingly focused on doing that in other ways as well, and one of those ways is with our new energy storage system, PWRcell 2. In a lot of different situations, a generator may not work for a homeowner. You might not have room to install it, may not be able to because of HOAs or whatnot. So, when you pair solar and storage in those situations, it’s really the best option for resiliency for the homeowner.
What products does Generac offer to support powerful and resilient home energy storage systems?
We offer a number of different products that provide resiliency and power to the home. Obviously, the generator. We are the leading provider for home standby generators, and those are the ones that are installed at the home with an automatic transfer switch, so when the power goes out, that generator will automatically turn on and it restores power to the home. We also provide a portfolio of portable generators, and these are the ones that you can manually go, connect and turn and connect an extension cord to these and provide power in the event of an outage. But we also provide our PWRcell energy storage system. One of the key benefits with the PWRcell system is that it has a flexible and scalable architecture. That means you can size the system for the homeowner’s needs.
What are the latest trends in solar storage technology?
Solar and storage are increasingly being paired together. Previously, storage had a fairly modest attach rate with solar, but we’re continuing to see that grow. More and more homeowners are looking for solutions, and installers are looking for solutions where the solar inverter and the storage system are made by the same company. When the same company is developing and deploying those solutions you’re able to optimize a lot of that integration in the performance and behavior between the two different systems
How rapidly is the residential battery storage market expanding, and what factors are driving this growth?
The storage market is tied directly to the solar market, and while we did see a lot of recent headwinds that have impacted the solar industry, storage adoption has actually increased during that time. It’s no secret that high interest rates and NEM 3.0 in California have stymied the solar market over the last couple years. Obviously, we’ve also seen a couple high profile solar installers declare bankruptcy and shut down operations, so that’s kind of impacted the growth of the market overall. But despite all that, the market still is expanding.
Net metering policies have changed the way homeowners, particularly in California, think about solar storage. Considering that, how should installers explain the value of solar storage?
California is just the first utility group to change these net metering rules. And this is actually happening in several other markets, like North Carolina, Illinois is getting rid of net metering. This is really impacting the value proposition for solar, and also it’s changing the value proposition for storage. If you think about it, the value proposition for solar has always been to offset your energy costs, but with the change to these rate structures, that offset has become very complicated, and it’s very difficult for installers to explain that to homeowners who don’t think about energy all the time, all they think about is how much it costs, right?
The best approach to explaining it to a homeowner — the simplest way for people to think about it — is the cost to use energy from your utility is continuing to increase, and that’s true across the country, particularly in places like California.
This podcast is sponsored by Generac
