sonnen gives energy independence to apartment owners and renters and guarantees free electricity for 10 years

Even customers without their own photovoltaic system can take advantage of the benefits of a sonnenBatterie and the free electricity tariff sonnenFlat city that will be introduced in Germany. Apartment owners and renters can now enjoy free electricity for 10 years and gain independence from their energy provider, eliminating the uncertainty of future energy cost increases.

Wildpoldsried, 26 January 2017 – Until now, it was only possible for home owners to use a home energy storage unit that was connected to their own photovoltaic system or another off-grid energy source. However, members of the sonnenCommunity in Germany can now obtain, store and use free electricity from the community without needing to generate their own power.

The new sonnenBatterie city system can easily be installed in any apartment and enable opening up the sonnenCommunity to new customers.  With the city system, customers receive 2,200 kWh of electricity free of charge every year for the next 10 years from sonnen – guaranteed. They also save approximately 300 kWh per year thanks to the sonnenBatterie’s built-in smart energy manager. The sonnenBatterie city is available for EUR 3,999 (gross price).

“The sonnenBatterie city will enable apartment renters and owners to save several hundred euros in electricity costs per year over the next ten years. What was previously only available to homeowners is now on the market for apartment dwellers as well. This puts clean, affordable energy within the grasp of so many more people,” states Philipp Schröder, Managing Director and Chief Sales & Marketing Officer of sonnen.

Instead of placing the burden on the homeowner to have an in-house photovoltaic system, the city system uses the sonnenCommunity, a dense network of electricity producers and consumers of renewable energy, as a source of generating and sharing electricity. The community members include detached houses fitted with PV systems, standalone PV installations, wind turbines, smaller biogas units, and now apartment owners.

If the sonnenCommunity generates more electricity than is required, apartment owners will be able to tap into this electricity pool to provide energy to power the household and simultaneously charge the sonnenBatterie. In the reverse scenario, if more electricity is consumed than is produced by the community, the household uses the energy stored in the sonnenBatterie city to provide power on demand.

The sonnenBatterie city fulfills a second function as well. It can balance out fluctuations in the public power grid, thereby helping to stabilize it. If there is too much energy in the power grid (perhaps due to a storm facilitating wind energy production), the sonnenBatterie can siphon off and store the surplus energy. If there is too little energy, the sonnenBatterie units can provide energy back to the power grid. This energy management service is provided thanks to a pool of thousands of sonnenBatterie units that are digitally linked to one another.

All in all, sonnen is providing households with a financial advantage while supporting the public power grid. This facilitates the integration of fluctuating, renewable energies in general and reduces the need to expand the power grid (and therefore charge the public additional fees in the process).

For the time being, availability of the sonnenBatterie city is limited to 5,000 units starting in Germany.