Germany’s sonnen offers ‘free’ grid power deal to solar users

Australians can tap into ‘free’ grid power under deals announced by German solar battery maker sonnen.

Philipp Schroder, chief marketing officer at sonnen at a home in West Ryde, Sydney. Picture: Hollie Adams

German solar battery maker sonnen is offering Australian households “free power” in a deal to increase its foothold in the local energy storage market.

And in a major coup, the company has signed up the same supplier and installation firm that installs Elon Musk’s rival Tesla Powerwall system — Natural Solar.

The “free power” deal was announced by sonnen at an event in Sydney and involves sonnen paying customers’ grid usage costs in return for access to streaming power from batteries to the grid where needed.

sonnen introduced the scheme in Germany last year where initially it installed 2000 battery systems to create what is a virtual power plant. sonnen told an online German publication that the flow of solar power to the grid would be for short periods. This amounted to “several minutes” of discharging to the grid, the first time deployed.

Natural Solar says there are now 60,000 customers in Germany using the sonnenFlat system.

It’s a similar idea to AGL’s virtual power plant opened in Adelaide in March, except that in AGL’s case, the participating homes are in the same area.

In sonnen’s case, those using the sonnenFlat system and returning solar power to the grid can be scattered around the country.

sonnen home energy battery.

sonnen has said that it regards Australia as its second most important market, hence the fanfare around this announcement. sonnen is reported to already have 13 per cent of the energy storage market share in Australia after entering it last year.

The company was formed 7 years ago in the small Bavarian village of Wildpoldsried, which is centred around a rural community. The town has a history of green conservative politics.

Its two entrepreneurial founders began by retrofitting petrol powered car so they could become electric but abandoned the idea in favour of building energy storage systems.

Last year sonnen told The Australian it had sold more than 11,000 battery units worldwide. They cost from $10,000 to $20,000, and came with an inverter for converting DC to AC power. They come as 2 kWh to 16 kWh systems, in 2 kWh increments.

Natural Solar, which has been promoting sonnenFlat on its website, says the sonnen rebate model works in tiers.

“Looking at the Germany model for sonnenFlat … storage determines the amount of free electricity the owner is entitled to.

“If a customer exceeds the amount based on their tier, then the owner starts to get charged only for electricity imported from the grid (not from power generated from your solar system and power utilised from your battery) at a rate significantly lower than standard retail electricity rates.”

West Ryde homeowner, Geoff Manners with his sonnen home storage battery. Picture: Hollie Adams.

Natural Solar managing director Chris Williams told The Australian last night that the company was “very excited” to be taking on the sonnen brand. With wholesale grid electricity prices rising sharply, the timing of the sonnen deal was “perfect” and took the price of power out of the control of the grid power retailers, he said.

Mr Williams said a 6 kWh system installed and connected would cost from $11,587 for users with their own solar panels. Systems including solar panels started at about $13,600. He estimated a return on investment in 5 to 6 years. sonnen’s warranty was the first of 10 years, or 10,000 cycles.

sonnen has about a 40 per cent share of the German solar battery market, according to reports in Europe. Figures by Set Ventures in May said sonnen was growing at about double the 40 per cent growth rate of the German solar market.

Two studies had it leading the German and European energy storage markets.

In addition, there are reports of several cases of high ranking Tesla battery staff defecting to sonnen in Germany.