Catching the solar industry’s attention sometimes means spending money on an enormous booth at RE+. Other times, word of mouth can bring a brand to the forefront without too much flashy marketing.
Hybrid inverter + battery storage manufacturer EG4 Electronics is one of those companies the residential solar industry can’t stop talking about right now — and the transformation from a modest, far-flung RE+ booth in 2024 to hefty square footage in the main exhibit hall in 2025 reflected that come-up.
“They weren’t really on my radar, and then I just kept hearing people ask about it, ask about it, ask about it. So then it makes you go, ‘OK, well, what is this?’” said Gage Mueller, senior energy consultant at Texas-based Solstice Solar.
EG4 and its parent company Energy Access Innovations (EAI) were created in rural Sulphur Springs, Texas, by CEO James Showalter. Showalter started his solar journey in the DIY community, installing a fully off-grid system on his family’s home in 2013. From there, he opened a long-tail solar installation company in West Texas. Ever the entrepreneur, he gave the company to one of his brothers to start a new endeavor — a solar product distribution company called Signature Solar that sold the products he wished he had access to at his installation firm.
Focusing on the DIY market meant fielding many questions from homeowners, so Signature established a call center with NABCEP-trained customer representatives.
“We were taking over 10,000 consultative phone calls a week with people building systems. The idea for an OEM new-generation storage manufacturer came within the first year,” Showalter said.
He and his team noticed many of the residential solar products on the market weren’t the best fit for its customer base. Many were tailored to the customers in the largest solar state of California — homeowners with relatively low energy demand, high energy prices and decent net-metering rates to sell power back to utilities (prior to NEM 3.0).
James Showalter.
“When you define the problem by that market, it becomes irrelevant to the rest of the country, because the energy costs are much, much higher in California than the rest of the country, and people use less energy, so you end up with higher-priced hardware that isn’t designed to put out high power,” Showalter said.
So he set out to create a product that would work for a market like his hometown in Texas — high energy demand, lower but rising energy costs, and little to no incentive to export power to the grid.
Partnering with a Chinese OEM called LuxpowerTek, in 2020 Showalter launched EG4 — which stands for “energy generation for everyone” — to close that gap he saw in the market. EG4 makes hybrid inverters such as the FlexBOSS, the 18k and 12k, as well as wall-mounted batteries. Showalter’s DIY roots mean the products are designed with the off-grid solar customer front-of-mind.
“We’re an off-grid system that [was] designed to hook up to the grid. Most of the systems out there are grid-tied systems that they’re trying to go back and add off-grid functionality to,” he said. “Our inverter, for instance, can start a 5-ton air conditioner right out of the box. That’s not even a design protocol for most of the other battery ESS providers.”
Installer experience
EG4 isn’t the first to prioritize the off-grid or hybrid solar customer, but installers having issues with other manufacturers have found success with the company.
“The companies that I was using before, their service seemed to tank around the time EG4 was coming out, and EG4 service has been pretty spot-on,” said Rudy Wright, CEO of East Texas installer Wright-Way Solar Technologies.
The first generation of EG4’s products weren’t UL-rated or grid-interactive, and they also had quality issues, according to Wright and Landon Liles, VP of operations for West Texas Solar. But the installers say the company has addressed those problems in its current models.
“The RMA process is super simple on the very few issues that we have had with the inverters. But the batteries have been, I would say, foolproof,” Liles said.
Aside from reliable service, the biggest draw of EG4 has been the low prices.
“Their 14-kWh battery hit the market at one-third of the price-per-kWh of the one I was selling prior to that,” Wright said. “I was willing to sell American-made at a 20 to 30% premium. But by the time you’re at a 66% premium… I have to get off the boat of American-made and jump into China import.”
West Texas Solar has had nearly 100% battery attachment rates on solar jobs for the past two years, with customers wanting more backup power as utilities pivot away from export compensation. EG4’s larger, low-cost battery checked those boxes.
“We realized that grid-tied-only was not working out for them, and assuming that utilities are going to buy your power back is a wrong assumption,” Liles said. “We needed bigger battery banks that don’t cost an arm and a leg.”
Now, West Texas Solar is installing at least two EG4 outdoor-rated batteries on every job.
“Having it truly outdoor-rated allows us to take up a lot less space in the garage or on the walls, and we can put it under our ground mounts, or kind of get creative with our placement of the batteries,” Liles said.
The user-friendly elements of EG4’s products are another selling point for West Texas Solar. Homeowners can click a button for pre-loaded settings that meet their needs, including nighttime battery use or self-consumption.
“From the installation to the commissioning to the support in the design, it’s been good, and I hope it stays that way,” Liles said. “I know that they are continually adding new products, and I hope there’s compatibility with old products to new products. People want to add on to their systems — hopefully that all meshes well and it doesn’t get too software-heavy.”
2026 plans and FEOC
As the end of the 25D residential ITC approaches this year, budget-friendly solar products like EG4’s are only going to become more important.
EG4’s Texas manufacturing facility.
“With the tax credit going away, with homeowners not wanting to rely on the grid anymore — now this is an affordable option, even without the tax credit,” said Mueller of Solstice Solar.
At the same time, more residential installers may turn to TPO financing structures to claim the 48E ITC — and will need to comply with new FEOC requirements limiting products from China and other countries.
EG4 is working on options for both categories of installers going into 2026.
“A lot of companies are going to raise the price for higher FEOC compliance, and they’re going to douse their 25D folks. We created a dual solution,” Showalter said.
Last summer, EG4 opened a 310,000-ft2 manufacturing facility in Commerce, Texas, to start assembling product in the United States. The company also acquired U.S. off-grid solar manufacturer OutBack Power to “combine OutBack’s legacy of engineering excellence with EAI’s global resources.”
In the fall, EG4 formed a supply partnership with LG Energy Solution to purchase 13.5 GWh of Michigan-made battery cells through 2030 that it will assemble into batteries at its Commerce facility for a “hyper-compliant” product, to be paired with its next-generation inverter. The company will still have Chinese batteries available for installers looking for cheaper options and not concerned with FEOC restrictions.
“We have a unified home EMS inverter and energy management platform, but we have a domestic content battery that’s rigorously compliant that we can bolt on, or we have a Chinese battery,” Showalter said.
Despite its humble DIY-focused beginnings, EG4 is becoming a recognizable name in solar during this time of slashed federal incentives and waning utility compensation.
“I think that’s what they initially started doing, was off-grid, and that’s what their passion was. And they still carry that with them, but have realized that they can compete with everybody else too,” Liles said.
