Germany finances major push into home battery storage for solar  

RNE has an article on Germany's efforts to encourage energy storage investment as part of their transition to renewable energy - Germany finances major push into home battery storage for solar.

The German government has responded to the next big challenge in its energy transition – storing the output from the solar boom it has created – by doing exactly what it has successfully done to date: greasing the wheels of finance to bring down the cost of new technology. Over the past five years, Germany has been largely responsible for priming an 80 per cent fall in the price of solar modules. Now it is looking at bringing down the cost of the next piece in the puzzle of its energy transition – battery storage. At its disposal is the giant state-owned but independently run development bank KfW. It performs in the clean energy space a similar function to Australia’s recently created and imminently doomed Clean Energy Finance Corp, but at such a scale that is not contemplated in most countries, possibly with the exception of China. It has assets of more than €500 billion, and lent €73 billion last year – with one-third of that targeted at renewables and climate investments. Over the past three years it provided €24 billion in loans for energy efficiency investment in homes, leveraging a total investment of €58 billion, helping insulate and seal more than 2 million homes, employing 200,000 people a year and saving more than 150 million tonnes of carbon. Six months ago, it began a new program to finance the introduction of battery storage into homes and small business, which it says is absolutely essential if the “energiewende”, the German expression for its energy transition – is to successfully move to the next phase and beyond 40 per cent renewable penetration.