Rishi Mehta of LCP Delta sees a major market shift taking place in the residential PV sector, with major companies consolidating to provide complete home energy solutions.
“The fate of solar energy is increasingly intertwined with that of energy storage, electric vehicles, heat pumps, energy management systems and more. You can no longer talk about these different technologies separately.”
With the largest suppliers best equipped to survive in the current environment of very low prices for PV modules and other components, Mehta sees smaller suppliers being gobbled up by large energy companies that are bundling some or all of these technologies into one product. This often also means that you relinquish control over energy management and that the supplier can make decisions about, for example, the charging times of batteries and electric vehicles.
Mehta sees this option as attractive to consumers who do not take an active interest in their energy supply, and is evidence that PV is becoming increasingly mainstream.
“Many are now purchasing PV and residential energy systems purely for economic reasons,” he said pv magazine earlier today. “We are well past the early adopter stage.”