The German business of home-battery maker sonnen has filed for insolvency, according to a Handelsblatt report on Oct. 22, while its American arm says it is growing fast. Employees at sonnen GmbH in Wildpoldsried, Bavaria, were told the same day.
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The split picture is the story. About 400 people work at the German company, which says it will keep serving more than 150,000 existing customers, while sonnen USA reports that its sales have doubled and its production has tripled over the past year. Coverage so far names no court for the German filing, and the company has not published a statement that the reporting has quoted directly.
What Handelsblatt and pv magazine reported on the German filing
pv magazine reported that the company confirmed the proceedings to Handelsblatt, although no official notice had yet appeared in the insolvency register. Per Handelsblatt, numerous subsidiaries are expected to be wound down or to enter insolvency under self-administration, and only one production site is expected to stay open. The newspaper’s own account, reporting that the German storage maker had filed for insolvency, is the original source for those details.
The company’s international footprint is also in play. In late August, Franc Comino, managing director of sonnen Ibérica, told pv magazine the company was staying in Spain and had high expectations there, a statement made before the insolvency became public. Whether the Spanish unit counts among the subsidiaries expected to be wound down has not been reported. sonnen did not respond to pv magazine’s requests for comment, and sonnen USA declined to comment on the German developments. Its own announcement about American growth does not address the filing.
Two months after Shell sold sonnen to Tiven
The timing is awkward. Shell, which bought sonnen in 2019, confirmed completion of its sale on Aug. 24 to Tiven, a Malta-based family office that is the private investment arm of Gert Purkert, a founding partner of the investment firm Aurelius. Shell did not disclose financial terms, though Handelsblatt reported in September 2023 a valuation of between €1.35 billion and €1.8 billion and said Shell wanted buyers for at least a 51% stake. A Shell spokesperson said at the time that the company believed Tiven and Aurelius WaterRise were well positioned to support sonnen’s continued development, and that the sale supported Shell’s portfolio high-grading efforts.
Shell first invested €60 million in sonnen in 2018 and agreed to acquire it in 2019. Trade coverage of the sale noted that Tiven and Aurelius declined to comment on the record. Less than two months later, the new owner’s German operating company is in insolvency.
sonnen USA’s doubled sales and the Georgia factory
The numbers from the American side come from sonnen USA itself, so they are the company’s own claims rather than audited results. Electrek reported that sonnen USA says sales have doubled and production has tripled year over year, with manufacturing expanded in Stone Mountain, Georgia. The company expects to deliver more than 180 megawatt-hours of residential battery storage in 2026.
sonnen built its name in Germany, where it launched virtual power plant programs in December 2015, and set up sonnen Inc. in the United States in late 2015. Its first American virtual power plant was in Utah, and such programs have since become the core of its U.S. branding and expansion. The U.S. business leans heavily on virtual power plants, where thousands of home batteries are pooled and dispatched together. In Texas, sonnen’s SOLRITE offering serves more than 6,000 homes. In Massachusetts, a program called sonnenCommunity pays cash rewards in the National Grid and Eversource service territories, and a Wattsmart program in Utah reports rising sales.
Blake Richetta, the chief executive of sonnen USA, said Tiven is firmly committed to the long-term success of the American business. Tiven said it looks forward to bolstering the company’s impressive growth. Neither statement explains how the German restructuring will affect software, warranty support or parts supply for U.S. owners, and reporting so far has not answered that question.
For owners, the practical questions are narrower than the corporate drama. The reports say the German company intends to keep supporting its more than 150,000 customers and that one production site will remain, and sonnen USA’s growth claims describe a business with its own factory in Georgia. What the filings do not yet settle is how the U.S. arm will be financed, whether it depends on German software or components, and whether any of the wound-down subsidiaries touch American customers. Until sonnen or Tiven answers those points, the growth figures and the insolvency stand side by side without being reconciled. Readers with a sonnen battery at home should note that the reporting describes continued support for existing German customers and a growing American business, and that neither company has announced any change to U.S. warranties, software or service. The next concrete markers will be an entry in the German insolvency register and any statement from the company itself.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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