Tesla might have grabbed a lot of attention with the Powerwall but they’re not going to be hogging the limelight for long. Mercedes-Benz are also throwing their hat into the home battery ring with an unnamed (in English, at any rate) energy cell.
The company’s planning on Home and Business models of energy storage. According to Daimler, the Home versions consist of “[u]p to eight battery modules with an energy content of 2.5 kWh…combined into an energy storage plant with a capacity of 20 kWh. Households with their own photovoltaic systems can thus buffer surplus solar power virtually free of any losses.”
Business options are set to be more flexible, but also larger in scale and, we’d imagine, a lot costlier.
If you happen to be in Germany, you could actually go and check it out. The energy storage plant, as Merc terms it, will be on show at the Intersolar trade-fair in Munich this week. Pricing is unknown but potential users can register their interest in the Merc-backed battery packs. It should be on the market, internationally, by September this year.