Tesla prepares for major growth in U.S. behind-the-meter energy storage in 2016

GTM Research analysis of a Tesla filing shows that the company expects to sell a larger volume of batteries to Tesla than was represented by the entire behind-the-meter market last year.

Share

GTM Research has analyzed a regulatory filing by Tesla Motors, and calculates that the company expects to supply SolarCity with 116 megawatt-hours (MWh) of its lithium-ion battery products for behind-the-meter use in 2016. This is more than this entire market segment in 2015.

GTM Research bases these figures on a 14A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, in which the company estimates that it will sell US$44 million in energy storage products, including its Powerwall residential battery system and PowerPack product, to SolarCity in 2016.

Tesla holds a multi-year contract to supply batteries to SolarCity, and this would be a 450% growth the $8 million in 2015 sales to SolarCity.

The research company says that at current prices this is around 168 MWh of batteries, but is expected to include the supply of a 52 MWh battery to SolarCity for a solar PV and energy storage project on the island of Kaua'i. When the battery for the Kaua’i project is excluded, Tesla should be supplying SolarCity with 116 MWh of batteries.

GTM Research estimates that the United States deployed only 71 MWh of behind-the-meter energy storage in all of 2015, and Tesla batteries deployed by SolarCity made up 37% of this.

“These are, of course, just estimates based on projected revenue,” states GTM Research Senior Energy Storage Analyst Ravi Manghani. “Regardless, they indicated a behind-the-meter energy storage market poised for major growth in the U.S.”

This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.

Popular content

Share

Christian Roselund

Christian Roselund served as US editor at pv magazine from 2014 to 2019. Prior to this he covered global solar policy, markets and technology for Solar Server, and has written about renewable energy for CleanTechnica, German Energy Transition, Truthout, The Guardian (UK), and IEEE Spectrum.

More articles from Christian Roselund

Related content

Elsewhere on pv magazine...

Leave a Reply

Please be mindful of our community standards.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.

Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.

You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.

Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.