Banking the Watts: Is Battery Storage Making Renewables Unstoppable?

You may have heard the line. Renewables don't work.

"What happens when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine?"

It's the oft quoted, amplified and (extremely) well distributed idea used to argue against solar and wind generation. It's in the online news, social posts and most often, used at kitchen table disagreements about 'going green'.

The argument is being neutered very quickly now. Whilst many commentators are distracted by the apocryphal scenes of 'brown outs' in Spain, where grid imbalances and aging systems burn out.

In the UK, the revolution is being conducted under the cover of darkness. At night, when the sun doesn't shine, (but the wind can blow) garages, utility cupboards and walls are brimming with power.

We're learning how to bank electricity.

When society learned it could use a currency, money to exchange later, or save - for produce it had in it's possession now, electricity has become a new currency. Kilowatt hours produced on a sunny September morning, don't have to be immediately put to work.

This allows businesses and homes to become more active members of our electricity network. Battery storage is allowing intermittent generation to stabilise, into dependable energy.

So when one of the largest energy providers announce a new range of battery storage. It really is an acceleration of the curve upward to more stability, less energy costs and more renewables.

The announcement

At its Energy Tech Summit, Octopus announced two domestic battery products due to launch next year.

The Nook Cube is a compact 2kWh plug-in battery aimed at renters and apartment dwellers, expandable to around 10kWh. The larger Nook Colossus is a wall-mounted battery for homeowners, available in 5kWh and 10kWh versions and stackable to around 30kWh. Both products are compatible with rooftop solar and include a 12-year warranty.

Those products are genuinely significant.

For years, battery storage has largely been limited to homeowners with the money, space and permission to install it. A plug-in battery potentially opens the market to millions of households who previously had no practical route into energy storage.

That's good news.

But it isn't the whole story.

Choosing the 'Best Bank'

The Octopus batteries are optimised to work with Octopus tariffs. A legitimate question consumers will ask. Is.

"What happens if I switch to another provider, with tariffs that suit my needs?"

Because you might have bought, at this point the best battery for what you need, but tariff switching could become more difficult as we see the transition from a battery provider, to what is effectively, a subscription service.

The question consumers should ask

When buying a boiler, nobody asks whether it will still heat the house if they change gas supplier. When buying a battery, perhaps they should begin asking the equivalent question.

No one expects Octopus to disappear.

But batteries typically remain in service for 10 to 15 years.

Energy markets change. Tariffs change. Technology changes.

Consumers deserve to understand whether they're buying a battery that happens to work brilliantly with Octopus...

...or buying a battery whose best features only exist while they're an Octopus customer.

That's a distinction worth understanding before the first unit is installed.

That's not to say the Octopus announcement is not brilliant news.

It's just that, as we move to a surge in battery use, consumers will ask these questions and want this level of clarity. Because, just like banking - it can all go very wrong if we just leave things 'to the experts' without any scrutiny.