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Californians to buy 50,000 residential batteries in 2020

Utilities cut power to 1.1 million California homes in 2019

California residential battery sales will more than quadruple in 2020. After widespread and lengthy outages in 2019, customers installing solar are willing to pay a premium to add storage for backup.

At least 50,000 California households will install storage systems in 2020, according to BloombergNEF estimates. It will be aided by a perceived need for backup power. So far, residential storage sales have been low in the state. More than a million homes have solar but only about 19,000 homes had batteries as of the end of November 2019.

For solar and storage companies – such as Tesla, Sunrun, Vivint and SunPower – the state is already one of the leading U.S. markets. Storage sales have been increasing quickly due to generous subsidies, time-of-use tariffs and solar companies eager to upsell.

Customers will need a large battery in order to keep power during long outages. This could encourage uptake of larger solar-plus-storage systems.

Clients can find the full report ”California Blackouts: Customers Turn to Backup Power” on The Terminal or on web.

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