[p2p-research] Panasonic’s new home battery could store a week’s-worth of electricity

[Ryan]

  Sent to you by Ryan via Google Reader: Panasonic’s new home battery
could store a week’s-worth of electricity via VentureBeat by Camille
Ricketts on 12/24/09

Panasonic is charging into the green space headlong — first with deals
to supply batteries for electric and hybrid vehicles — and now
announcing that it will launch a massive lithium-ion storage battery
capable of powering an average home for up to a week, the company says.

This is significant for two reasons. First, if home batteries like this
one become commonplace, renewable sources of energy like rooftop solar
and residential turbines could finally take off. The biggest roadblock
to their adoption is that they are intermittent; reliable storage is
needed to make them effective. Second, if affordable storage is
achieved on the home-level, there might be less need for grid-scale
storage, which is pricier and harder to accomplish.

The announcement is hastened by Panasonic’s acquisition of a more than
50 percent stake in Sanyo, making the company a battery manufacturing
powerhouse that could trounce almost everyone else in the market,
including A123Systems, Johnson Controls-Saft, Valence Technologies, and
others. Becoming the earliest entrant into the home storage space would
solidify its dominance.

Panasonic, which says it has already thoroughly tested this technology,
plans to bundle its storage device with a home energy monitoring system
that would allow users to view how much power they are using and how
much it is costing them right on their television displays. This could
make the company a major player in the smart grid arena as well.

Depending on how successful Panasonic is at marketing its household
battery (and bringing down the cost), it could become a formidable
competitor for fuel-cell makers like Clear Edge Power. Fuel cells also
allow for low-emission operations, converting natural gas into
electricity and recycled heat. But they don’t store electricity for use
later, which is a major need for alternative energies to gain traction.

Panasonic, which scored a deal to supply batteries to Tesla Motors in
October, has already successfully pushed automotive battery makers out
of the market, like Imara, which shuttered earlier this month. Valence,
being kept afloat by a new contract with Smith Electric Vehicles, could
be next if it doesn’t move fast. In any case, it will have a head
start, with Panasonic’s storage system not hitting stores until 2011.



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