ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEMS
The Basics
Energy Storage Systems (‘ESS’) are designed to capture and store excess energy that your solar panels produce. The power is stored in specially designed batteries, which release power when the power generation of the panels don’t meet the demand, like at night or in a storm.
If you installed a large enough battery system you could live off-grid, that is, you would never have to buy power again.
The Battery
The most important component of an ESS is the battery.
Undersizing leads to excessive discharge, oversizing makes the system unnecessarily expensive.
Charging or discharging too quickly reduces the life of the battery as does discharging the battery to a very low level. Temperature is another very important factor, particularly in Queensland. Lithium batteries in particular cannot handle high temperatures.
Off grid battery design requires experience and careful consideration of customer loads, maximum demand, maintenance and climate. Unfortunately, due to the popularity of battery storage, many inexperienced people are providing poor advice and installations.
If you’re going off grid you rely on your system to keep the lights on and the fridge cold.
A reliable off grid system is not cheap. A ‘rule of thumb’ pricing for a 25kWh/day house starts at $50,000. Too many $25,000 systems fail in twelve months or less, usually because of undersized batteries.
Which Battery?
On grid hybrids – We supply the Enphase IQ5 system.
Off grid – We install Discovery Lithium Ferrous Phosphate batteries.
We exclusively use Schneider XW Pro inverters, XW MPPT 100 600 regulators and monitor the systems using Schneider Conext Insight.
Off grid systems are not bought off the shelf.
If you’re thinking about an off grid system, contact us for an in depth assessment and design.