The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), the national trade association for the U.S. solar energy industry, and the Electricity Storage Association (ESA), the international trade association promoting the commercialization and deployment of energy storage systems, today announced a new partnership to help grow solar energy markets and accelerate the deployment of grid-scale energy storage systems across the country, which will help modernize the electricity grid and make it more efficient, balanced and cost-effective.
Under the new partnership, SEIA and ESA will collaborate on communication efforts, events and policy activities promoting solar energy and energy storage. The expansion of each organization’s activities to include both sets of technologies furthers the missions of both organizations and directly assists their common members—solar product and energy storage manufacturers.
ESA celebrated today’s announcement at its annual conference in Santa Clara, Calif.
“This natural alignment of the Solar and Energy Storage industries is about modernizing our energy system for the 21st century by focusing on reliability while making the grid clean, efficient and cost-effective. Having worked together on the Energy Storage Investment Tax Credit that is gaining support in Congress, we are confident this partnership will help highlight the value proposition of energy storage for integrating renewables into our electricity system. We look forward to working with SEIA on these and other issues going forward,” said Chris Shelton, chairman of ESA.
“Large scale deployment of renewable energy is proving that we can achieve high levels of renewable generation without sacrificing reliability,” said Arno Harris, CEO of Recurrent Energy and chairman of the SEIA board. “Focus on development of electricity storage will only further solidify solar in the mainstream energy mix.”
“SEIA is excited to work with ESA to help achieve mutual collaborative goals to better support our respective members and expand the U.S. solar energy market,” said SEIA president and CEO Rhone Resch. “Electricity storage is an area of innovation and growth within the solar industry. With the addition of storage, the possibilities for solar are endless.”
Today, the U.S. has 7,700 MW of installed solar electric capacity – enough to power more than 1.2 million American homes – and 40 percent of our existing capacity, or 3,300 MW, was installed last year alone, making solar one of the fastest-growing industries in the nation. America’s solar industry now employs nearly 120,000 workers at 5,600 companies – most of which are small businesses spread across every state in the union.
Energy storage is growing at a similarly quick pace; storage already accounts for 24,000 MWh of installed energy storage capacity (majority of which is pumped hydroelectricity) that serves Americans in almost every state. As outages from unreliable portions of our grid cost Americans $130 billion annually, more and more leaders are turning to storage. By 2017, grid-scale energy storage will reach an astounding 185.4 gigawatt-hours and represent a $113.5 billion incremental revenue opportunity for an industry that currently generated sales of $50 to $60 billion a year.
— Solar Builder magazine
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