Over 150 companies attended from across the industry. Here are some of the key insights and why we came away convinced that we are in the right place at the right time with the right team:

Major utilities and network operators kicked off with a clear message – 2016 is the year for energy storage and over half the audience believed that home energy storage (as opposed to larger scales) was the best place to grow this industry. Bloomberg New Energy Finance then talked about the huge synergies with the Electric Vehicle industry, which is responsible for major downward trend in battery prices. Powervault is well placed to exploit these synergies with Nissan as a key partner and with our Technical Director having learned his trade in the automotive industry including with Mercedes.

Despite huge enthusiasm for energy storage, all speakers agreed it wasn’t going to be plain sailing. To go mainstream the sector has to figure out how to stack up multiple revenue streams for its customers by linking up with partners in the utility and grid balancing markets. Our MD Joe Warren was a pioneer in this very industry, creating new ‘grid balancing’ products with Open Energi and delivering the first National Grid contract in this space.

But a product with ‘stacked grid balancing revenue streams’ isn’t very sexy if you are selling to customers right? So the challenge put to the home energy storage sector in the conference was ‘how will we sell this to customers?’.  Our Commercial Director, Katie Critchlow has 15 years experience in the retail and consumer sector delivering green products and strategies for consumer lead businesses such as M&S, Unilever, RB and Asda. Katie believes the key is in making it easy for our customers “our products are getting ‘smarter’ meaning that everything is done for the customer automatically to maximise savings. We’re already the most affordable and easiest to install product on the market and our team of engineers stop at nothing to help our customers before, during and after installation.

At the end of the summit we gained a well deserved mention in the Energy Storage 100 a list of the most exciting and influential businesses in energy storage in the UK and beyond.