5 Business Initiatives That You Can Power Up With Solar + Storage

Renewable energy procurement and onsite energy generation such as solar are great first steps in driving profits and meeting sustainability goals. They cut overall energy consumption to lower costs while reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which modern customers now expect from brands. However, to fully unlock the value of solar and renewables, businesses must also deploy a battery energy storage solution.

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How does battery storage makes solar more valuable?

 By adding a solar energy storage solution to your solar project, you can save excess solar energy for when electricity costs are highest. Solar energy production typically peaks in the middle of the day, when the sun is brightest and energy costs are lowest. Businesses that rely on solar energy alone are thus still exposed to high demand charges or peak time-of-use costs that often occur later in the afternoon or evening, when solar energy production drops. This substantially increases total project savings, increasing the value of your solar asset.

In addition to protecting against time-variable rates and demand charges, battery energy storage also future-proofs your solar project against changing electricity rates. Around the country, Net Energy Metering (NEM) and other market rates and programs have changed substantially over the last few years and will continue to increase. As a flexible, software-controlled asset, energy storage can adapt with changing rate structures to ensure your energy consumption, solar production, and battery storage are optimized to reduce costs. 

All together, solar storage delivers a comprehensive energy strategy for businesses looking to gain a competitive advantage, manage risk, and build on sustainability goals. Optimizing your energy infrastructure with solar storage impacts your business in 5 key ways:

1) Solar Energy Storage Increases Profitability

Executives must often optimize operational and cost efficiencies in order to gain competitive advantage and free up cash flow for strategic business initiatives. The money tied up in your energy infrastructure could be better used to fund projects critical to your mission as an executive and your overall business goals. 

Solar storage accomplishes this by delivering more energy savings than solar production alone. Having the flexibility to control the timing of solar energy consumption allows businesses to extract more value from the solar energy they produce. 

2) Solar Energy Storage Is Sustainable & Reputable

Customers, investors, and other business stakeholders expect businesses to be proactive and measured in their sustainability goals. Executives must enact strategies that both decrease their reliance on fossil fuels and other non-renewable energy sources while maximizing the value of their clean energy assets. 

Energy storage allows you to consume solar energy even when the sun isn’t shining. That means that businesses can rely less on fossil fuels and traditional peaker plants in the evening when solar energy production tapers down. This further drives your sustainability performance metrics while elevating your brand’s value.

3) Solar Energy Storage Helps with Adhering to Compliance Requirements 

Businesses must constantly adapt to changing federal and local regulations. This means that static energy assets become liabilities as compliance requirements change. 

Energy storage gives businesses the flexibility they need to adapt to changing compliance requirements. By allowing businesses to control when they discharge stored energy generated from solar assets, energy storage future proofs against changing policies and regulations. Intelligent controls ensure that businesses can respond to those changes even faster and with less effort.

4) Solar Energy Storage Helps Mitigate Risk

Mitigating risk is crucial to operating a business profitably and sustainably. Changing time-of-use rates, demand charges, and energy policies leave your business exposed to energy price variability, which limits your business’s ability to attain its other goals and priorities. 

Deploying solar storage limits exposure to price variability by allowing you to be flexible with your energy assets. This enhances your business resiliency and gives you control over your energy destiny by helping to control unknown variables from changing rates and policies. 

5) Solar Energy Storage Drives Operational Efficiency 

Your operations team needs to keep the lights on and operations running smoothly. Interruptions to daily operations are both inefficient and expensive, and your business needs to run without disruption or waste. 

With solar storage, you can cut down on energy waste while gaining the flexibility to use energy on your business’s operating schedule, freeing resources and staff to focus on your core business objectives.