I came across a story this morning about a company called Moixa Technology which is a small London, UK based solar products company that makes some impressive products. The one that is causing things to get stirred up is their briefcase sized battery for storing electricity both on and off grid for remote solar systems. One thing the UK has is a lot of infrastructure built to remote areas on farms with narrow lane ways that could have a better power solution. So far three major energy producers have invested in the project the Moixa has developed. The former CEO of SSE, a big six competitor, and the current CEO of Innogy are all heavily invested. As a privately held company it shows real growth for a technology with such potential. As a part of the race, dozens of companies are looking for efficient ways to store solar power and wind power that are in remote areas.
The recent increase in solar efficiency has led to more power being available, in some off-grid locations this means supplying a vast quantity of electricity with a limited amount of actual solar real estate. In come cases a 60 cell can produce more power than a 72 cell of just a few years ago. The key to these systems though is the cost, keeping costs down for solar production will help with future adoption of the technology and drive larger market share to the winner of this constant battle.
With the average lithium ion battery costing about 35% less than six years ago there is the ability to transition away from the Absorbed Glass Mat, and Sealed AGM batteries commonly used. The biggest pain is that they are difficult to maintain since, you use distilled water and need to monitor their deterioration for building an accurate charging profile and when the are linked in parallel or series are difficult to run routine inspections with.
Today, the United States dominates the energy storage market if you can believe. Japan being a good competitor is second, but they are still a long way off. Interest in this sector is growing by about 58% a year based upon the current number of companies that are starting to attack the problems of power storage.
Simon Daniel, the CEO and co-founder of Moixa recently released a statement that states his company has surely been helped by the renewable energy boom that has led to solar panel systems being installed on an estimate 800,000 UK home owner roofs. Our selves we have installed about 500 systems but will have installed almost 1 million by the year 2020, which for a company of our size would be close to accurate in terms of installation volume.
Moixa systems start at $3,500 and are designed to be grid connectable. Nothing is available for the US market currently but with recent investments we could see something soon. This technology will help to be a major shift in the energy market with less reliance on a major producer and more of a home grown approach. Cost effective solar energy storage has always been the holy grail and it always will be, there is nothing that is going to change that. Moixa and its investors are pretty certain that they will be ahead of the game when it comes down to having a complete solution.