The competition in energy markets increases and long-established companies have to face this changing landscape. Now, also Apple wants to sell its surplus solar electricity.
The electronics company Apple has filed a request to sell power on wholesale markets across the US at the respective regulator FERC. Soon, its subsidiary Apple Energy LLC could be selling excess electricity from its own solar power plants in the US. Furthermore, Apple has been active in renewable energy projects since some time. They serve mainly for the generation of electricity for own use and Apple currently produces 93 percent of its power demand by own facilities.
Apple wants to increase the capacity of its worldwide solar power projects to more than 520 MW. Making the step to be able to sell electricity to end customers enables the company to make better use of excess solar power. Figure 1 shows the share of solar energy capacity of major US-based companies. Apple occupies the fourth position, which relates to 60 MW of capacity and 8 percent of the share.
Source: Energy Brainpool
Figure 1: Share of commercial solar energy capacities in the US
In Germany new companies enter the energy market too. The German internet corporation United Internet AG, which owns brands such as 1&1, Versatel and GMX, founded the 1&1 Energy GmbH in the end of January 2016. Objective of the subsidiary is “trading and sales of energy, as well as any related services.” The parent company has strong competencies in digitalization and also holds a great number of customer contracts in the internet business.
This week, EnBW one of the four biggest German utilities announced that it will abandon its energy sales business for large customers. This business area is just not profitable anymore, the company declared. For private clients EnBW wants to intensify its efforts to become more customer-oriented while increasing its competitiveness. Through these and more measures EnBW aims to save a total of 250 million Euro.
Existing energy companies would be wise to take new businesses such as Apple Energy LLC or 1&1 Energy GmbH seriously.
