Sonnen GmbH

sonnen GmbH (proprietary name and abbreviated form: sonnen) is a company in the energy industry headquartered in Wildpoldsried in the district of Oberallgäu, Germany. It produces home energy storage systems for private households and small businesses. The company is considered the market leader in Germany and additional international markets. Moreover, it is the center of a community for supplying power from renewable energies. Christoph Ostermann and Torsten Stiefenhofer founded the company in 2010 as a GmbH (German limited liability company). The legal name of the company at that time was PROSOL Invest Deutschland GmbH. In December 2013, the shareholders' meeting decided to change the company name to sonnenBatterie GmbH, in order to adopt the name of its product range and to support the goal of internationalization. Since November 2015, the company has operated as sonnen, under which all the company's individual activities are organized. From 2008 to 2010 above all founder Torsten Stiefenhofer developed a home battery marketed from 2011 under the name of sonnenBatterie. As a solar battery, the product is geared especially to independent homeowners with a photovoltaic system. As of mid-2016, eight generations of this power storage system have been developed and marketed. Germany is the main sales market for the devices. The company also distributes the home batteries in Austria, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Ireland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, the United States and Australia (current as of: October 2016). Along with the renaming of the company to Sonnen GmbH, the company announced in November 2015 that starting in 2016, it would establish its own power community, whose members can trade power among themselves. Since September 2016, owners of a sonnenBatterie, who are a member of this power community, can obtain electricity at a flat rate. At the beginning of May 2017, TenneT and sonnen announced their plans to implement decentralized photovoltaic domestic storage batteries using blockchain technology to help stabilize the power grid and improve the integration of renewable energies.