Some businesses are only looking to reduce their carbon footprint. (We need many more businesses that make this the top priority, but I digress.) Energy storage can store up excess solar generation throughout the day and stretch that far into the night to offset or eliminate the need to purchase any electricity from the grid.
Others just want to save money, and the ability to soak up cheaper power during off-peak hours and use it back from the batteries when power isn’t so cheap is completely feasible with today’s tech.
Stem has built its business on the proposition of adding energy storage to customer facilities as a means of optimizing the cost of energy across the customer’s business.
Stem believes that adding solar to the proposition sweetens the deal even further by adding a local source of electricity generation that offsets usage in the highest periods.
This offsets what is typically the most expensive power with locally generated solar energy.
“The key is to allow the customer to operate their business exactly the way they want to, regardless of what’s going on with utility rates,” Stem’s SVP of global sales and marketing, Alan Russo said. “That’s the challenge: utility rates are trying to change customer behavior so that they can change when they consume energy to solve the grid’s problem.
Batteries live between the utility and the grid and allow you to operate your business exactly the way you want to, optimized for you, and the utility still gets the benefit of seeing demand when it’s most convenient for them.”
They currently sell Tesla’s energy storage products as well as those from a number of other manufacturers.
Reference- Stem website, Cleantechnica