Just before Tesla’s announcement about a standalone battery storage option for homeowners and businesses, solar installer Sungevity announced they will provide a battery option for customers, either to own or lease:

As renewable energy becomes more widely used and battery prices fall, the company is betting that pairing rooftop solar panel systems with storage will soon be competitive with traditional electricity supplies.

“We expect that in two years there will be grid parity,” Peter Graf, Sungevity’s chief product officer, said in an interview. “All the market dynamics and hardware dynamics point in that direction right now.”

The interesting piece of it is that company leaders say customers were driving this move because they want on-site storage. But they may be in for a sticker shock, at least at first: batteries don’t really pencil for most people at this point, unless they really value the backup power or don’t care because they have a lot of money. But as prices decrease, and as new electricity rates encourage late afternoon/evening generation, batteries will become a good deal.