Batteries Will Do To Energy What Cellphones Did To Telecom: Advanced Microgrid & Tesla

By Jeff McMa­hon: Cheap bat­tery stor­age will prove as dis­rup­tive to the ener­gy indus­try as the cell­phone has been to telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, exec­u­tives from two Cal­i­for­nia startups—Tesla Ener­gy and Advanced Micro­grid Solutions—said today at the Nation­al Clean Ener­gy Sum­mit in Las Vegas.

“I would bet that there’s not a sin­gle per­son in this entire audi­ence who does not have a cell­phone in their pock­et,” said Susan Kennedy, CEO of Advanced Micro­grid Solu­tions and for­mer chief of staff for Cal­i­for­nia Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“Bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy is now about to do the same thing to the ener­gy indus­try that it did to the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions industry.”

The ener­gy indus­try is poised for dis­rup­tion, Kennedy said, because it was built with­out bat­tery stor­age in mind.

“If you think about it, the entire grid from the ground up was designed around the con­cept that ener­gy can­not be stored. And so the whole grid is going to change dra­mat­i­cal­ly because of one thing: bat­tery storage.”

At the Nation­al Clean Ener­gy Sum­mit today, Tes­la Vice Pres­i­dent Diar­muid O’Connell shared the stage with Jamie Evans, a man­ag­ing direc­tor at  Pana­son­ic, which is part­ner­ing with Tes­la to make bat­ter­ies at its giant robot­ic Gigafac­to­ry in Nevada.

To read the full arti­cle, vis­it Forbes.