Younicos recognised at an early stage that energy storage would play a big part in making fossil-free energy a reality. Stephen L. Prince, their CEO, met up with PES to expand on this, their intelligent software solutions and their current projects…
PES: Welcome back to PES Solar/PV magazine. Thanks for talking with us. Would you like to begin by explaining a little about the background of your organisation and how you currently serve the solar industry?
Stephen L. Prince: Sure, thanks for having us. Our company was created by solar pioneers who believed in the necessity of a fundamental transformation of the energy world. They started to look seriously into how renewables could become the backbone of energy generation – rather than just a small add-on. So we were amongst the first people who anticipated that energy storage would play a key role in making fossil-free energy supply a reality.
Today storage has come a long way: Prices for both solar PV and batteries are in continuous decline and are now cost-competitive even without subsidies. Storage-backed renewables are starting to disrupt energy markets globally. We provide both intelligent software and plug-and-play storage solutions that enable PV to assume a much larger share of power generation than was (physically) possible before. This, in turn, enables interesting and economically viable utility-scale solar-plus-storage business models.
