Owners of solar PV systems in Germany are rarely enthusiastic about combining their systems with storage options prompting research company EuPD to investigate the issue. The resulting report, entitled “The German PV market from an end customer perspective – Focus: Storage”, has found that alongside economic challenges, one of the main reasons for lack of development is to do with the lack of communication between installers and customers with regard to possible storage solutions. The report is the Third Edition of EuPD’s ‘EndCustomerMonitor’ series.
A mere 20 percent of customers were asked by their installers about energy storage, the report reveals. The exceptions to the rule were often customers of IBC Solar who were informed about storage solutions nearly twice as often as customers of other firms, according to Dr Thomas Olbrecht, a Senior Manager at EuPD Research.
The report also provides detailed insights into the distribution of installed storage systems and the brand awareness of individual storage system manufacturers, finding that the most well-known company in this sector was Varta. The study also looks at brands of inverters and modules chosen by customers and investigates the issue of system maintenance and operation.
Around 3000 PV system owners and potential buyers of residential systems were surveyed across the whole of Germany via an online quantitative questionnaire. The survey found that the demographics of system owners differs from that of the average German citizen in that typical solar energy system owners live in rural areas, have a net household income of at least 3000 euros and that half of them have university level educational qualifications.
The results of the study will be available from EuPD Research in September 2013 in the EndcustomerMonitor 3.0 edition.
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