pv magazine: Venture capitalist sees billion-dollar opportunities for solar and storage innovators

Rapid changes are underway for local solar and storage, as innovations drive down costs and create new markets for hardware and services, says Bill Nussey in the book Freeing Energy.

The former technology CEO and venture capitalist describes dozens of local energy opportunities, projecting that each represents a market of at least a billion dollars of annual revenue.

Nussey developed his thinking through interviews with hundreds of solar and storage industry participants. While many of the technologies he describes will be familiar to pv magazine readers, his public assessment that they represent billion-dollar opportunities is new.

Nussey says he wrote the book for the “ten thousand innovators needed” to speed the local energy transition. Even so, people already working in the industry are likely to find Nussey’s vision for the growth of local energy engaging, along with the “shop talk” throughout the book.

Nussey also presents a few innovation opportunities related to large-scale solar, arising from overbuilding of solar farms, or sizing them to power short winter days. Overbuilt solar farms will produce “cheap excess summer electricity” that will “spawn massive new industries” that operate each summer, Nussey says, such as desalination, indoor agriculture, or production of hydrogen and ammonia.

In a nod to policy, Nussey calls for “immediate attention” to slashing soft costs for local solar and storage installations—which helped Australia reach 20% residential solar uptake; instituting dynamic customer pricing to reduce electricity bills; and requiring new buildings to be ready for solar and storage installations.

Read the full article at pv magazine