Power and Institutional Dynamics in Germany’s Energiewende: Lessons from the market for stationary home battery storage systems

Keywords: energy transition, battery storage systems, regulation, innovation, policy mix, transition studies
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Next to a further deployment of renewable energy resources, energy efficiency and improved capaci-ties of energy storage play a key yet often under-recognised role in the German Energiewende, i.e. the transition by Germany to an environmentally sound low carbon energy supply. In fact, the market for residential battery storage systems displays dynamic growth at present, characterized by numerous entries of new producers and massive rises in sales. Apart from rapid technological advances, also the organization of the market becomes fundamentally changed. One important innovation in this arena of change is the employment of so-called energy communities that result from the opportunity to interlink large numbers of small, regularly privately-owned wind and solar power plants combined with energy storages by means of digital technology. Thus, the members of these platforms are enabled to share their self-produced energy among other peers independently of conventional energy providers. Draw-ing on empirical insights gained foremost through participant observation and problem-centered inter-views and with reference to the concept of layering of policy mixes, the proposed paper demonstrates that a large share of the very potential of such virtual power plants in fact remains untapped, most notably due to institutional aspects such as gaps, misconstructions and contradictions in the regulatory framework, as well as political (conflicts of) interest(s). On a more general level, the presented findings improve our knowledge on institutional dynamics on various geographical scales in general, and on the (inhibited) establishment of sustainability transitions in particular.