Sonnenbatterie has resurrected discussions on the residential and commercial energy storage market. The German storage integrator, who has sold over 4,000 battery systems across Europe, raised almost $10 million of venture capital for their expansion across the Atlantic. The firm collected $9.4 million led by Munich Venture Partners, a cleantech VC specialist and Chrysalix SET, an Amsterdam-based management firm, along with previous investor eCAPITAL. However Sonnenbatterie are well aware of the vastly different demands of the US market, compared to their native Germany. The firm’s CEO, Christoph Ostermann, said that German residential customers are fed up with high electricity prices and want independence from the utility. In the US, the motivation often seems to be the desire for backup power for when the grid goes down or during natural disasters, as well as a hedge against utility pricing. As a technology, residential and commercial battery storage is still expensive and unproven, but the industry and […]