California Net Metering Change Boosts Residential Battery Market

Sales of batteries accompanying residential solar installations are booming in California, after the state revised a key policy.

About 85% of new residential solar deals in California now include batteries, Patrick Jobin, a senior vice president for Sunrun Inc., said at the Evercore ISI Global Clean Energy & Transition Technologies Summit in New York on Thursday. That’s up from 20% before new net-metering policies took effect in April.

The surge comes as regulators are increasingly concerned about reliability in a state where power consumption during blistering summer heat waves has threatened to overwhelm the grid. The revised policies ...