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Germany Kicking Off Home Solar Battery Boom as Prices Drop

Germany Kicking Off Home Solar Battery Boom as Prices Drop

(Bloomberg) -- Solar battery sales in Germany are poised to boom as prices for the facilities continue to drop and homeowners turn to generate their own electricity to shield against rising power prices, the BSW solar lobby said.

Total solar battery installs in Germany exceeded 100,000 units this summer and at the current rate of growth may double by 2020, the group said on its website. Prices for batteries have halved since 2013 and now every second builder of a rooftop solar system buys a storage unit, the industry body said.

“Price, protection from ever rising power prices, a notion to do something for the environment -- these are the sentiments driving sales,” said BSW spokesman Christian Hillerberg on the phone from Berlin. “Power prices and how they’ll develop are fast becoming issues for consumers.”

Germany Kicking Off Home Solar Battery Boom as Prices Drop

The average price of power for households in Germany this year will reach a record 29.44 euro cents per kilowatt-hour, the BDEW utilities federation said in May. Power generation costs for a small solar rooftop installation range between 4 and 11 euro cents per kilowatt-hour, the ISE Fraunhofer said in a March report.

Solar system and storage prices are falling at a rate that makes domestic generation attractive. Buyers are weighing the costs of amortizing units and of generating and storing green power against average retail power costs, and are detecting savings, the group said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Parkin in Berlin at bparkin@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net, Lars Paulsson, Rob Verdonck

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