In this week’s weekly news roundup, we discuss several important updates from Tesla and a promising new report on the future of U.S. energy storage.
Tesla announces a major change to its Powerwall sales policy
Tesla recently announced that, moving forward, they will only sell their popular Powerwall battery in conjunction with their solar panels. This decision follows a separate announcement in January stating that Tesla planned to have stronger integration between its Powerwall battery and solar panel systems.
This wasn’t the only Tesla news in recent headlines; the company also drew attention this week because of a price hike for their popular Solar Shingle product. The electric car giant began charging more for these installations, citing early errors in assessing the difficulty of putting solar shingles on certain roof types. Tesla has offered free Powerwalls to some customers who unexpectedly experienced this cost shift, which in some instances resulted in up to a 70 percent increase in price.
Wood Mackenzie report projects Americas to have highest global installed storage capacity
A new report published by Wood Mackenzie forecasts that the Americas region will overtake the Asia-Pacific region in installed solar capacity by 2025. Researchers anticipate that the United States will contribute strongly to this growth.
The report comes after the United States broke previous energy storage records, having tripled its installed capacity and contributed 38 percent of new global capacity in 2020. Forecasters expect slowdowns in the Asia pacific region due to challenges relating to government incentives and a lack of strong policy support. More specifically, researchers from Wood Mackenzie suggest that the United States will attain a total energy storage capacity of 371 gigawatt-hours (GWh) by 2030, while the global total will exceed 729 GWh of capacity.
