A house lit up alone in Texas Blackout, the secret is ESS

In the state of Texas, USA, which recently caused a’blackout’ situation due to a record cold wave, an ordinary house became a hot topic. This is because only a toxic house was lit brightly in a residential area that turned into darkness. It was a house with Tesla’s residential energy storage system (ESS) installed. Short videos of about 13 seconds overcoming the blackout with ESS that stores electricity spread through social media (SNS), and foreign media reported successively about ESS activities in winter storms. Stocks related to ESS and fuel cells also rose significantly.

The global ESS industry is growing rapidly. According to market researcher SNE Research, the size of the global ESS market is expected to grow by an annual average of 33% from 11.6 GWh (gigawatt hours) in 2018 to 86.9 GWh in 2025. However, in the domestic ESS industry, orders were virtually cut off from last year and are on the verge of death. The head of a sales team at a large company in the ESS business said, “The ESS industry has returned to the level in 2014 when the ESS industry was born,” he said. “It is not strange even if the industrial base collapses today.” SMEs are worse off. The representative of the small and medium-sized business that produces ESS sighed, saying, “The stock is piled up, but the company’s operating funds are running out because there are no orders.”

ESS attracted attention as a leading industrial group in Korea until the beginning of 2019. However, with nearly 30 fires at the ESS plant, concerns about safety spread. Since then, the government has conducted two investigations to determine the cause of the fire. However, even in an investigation for nearly a year, the government was unable to clearly identify the cause of the fire. Meanwhile, policy support for the ESS industry was cut off. Budget support was not extended due to the sunset system. This is the reason for criticism that the growing industry has stopped due to the government’s passive administration.

The ESS industry has entered into a collective action. The Korea ESS Association, which participated in more than 30 SMEs, held an inaugural general meeting on the 20th of last month and issued a declaration urging the government to prepare industrial measures. In its declaration, the association said, “We will mobilize all means to resist the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, which is driving (ESS industry) into a bankruptcy crisis.” He raised his voice. In this regard, Professor Moon Seung-il of the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering at Seoul National University pointed out that “the ESS is not necessary to overcome the intermittent nature of eco-friendly energy such as solar and wind power,” he said. .

Reporter Kiheon Kang [email protected]