Mercedes-Benz Teams With Vivint Solar To Tackle Energy Storage

Mercedes-Benz is taking a page out of Tesla's book, announcing today that it will soon pair its batteries with solar energy systems installed by Vivint Solar. As with Tesla's Powerwall batteries, these Mercedes-Benz batteries will be complementary to Vivint's solar panels, offering energy storage and backup power.

Obviously, having a battery to store any extra power collected by your solar panels can be a huge benefit, as it allows you to use that power during peak hours, which are usually at night. Those batteries can also supply backup power in the event of a grid outage. Regardless of how they're used, having a battery system backing up an array of solar panels can help customers save even more cash on energy costs.

Mercedes-Benz has already started offering batteries for solar power systems over in Europe. In the announcement today, it says that launch has been "successful" thus far, prompting the company to turn its sights to the US. Mercedes-Benz batteries will be arriving later this year, with Vivint launching this solar system in California first.

That launch is scheduled to go down sometime in Q2, but for the moment there isn't a specific launch day yet. One cool thing about these batteries is that they're modular – each individual weighs in at 2.5kWh, and they can be combined to create systems up to 20kWh. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach to energy storage, Mercedes-Benz is betting that a modular approach will save customers money and eventually pull more of them in.

Of course, at this early stage, we don't have any US pricing, though there have been a few other details released. For instance, Mercedez-Benz says that these batteries come with a 10 year warranty and are engineered to last a long time – after 10 years, capacity is only expected to decrease to 80%. That doesn't sound too bad, and if the price is right, Mercedes-Benz could certainly break into the energy scene here in the US.