Battery systems for solar power
The parts of a home storage system for solar power
There are always three parts to a Zonnefabriek home storage system:
- A Sunny Home Manager in the distribution board, which controls the system
- A Sunny Boy Storage or Sunny Tripower Smart Energy battery inverter
- A set of batteries
BYD battery systems
One of the biggest players in the home storage market is Chinese company BYD ('Build Your Dreams'). BYD produces the HVS and HVM battery systems, which are compatible with SMA battery inverters; the Sunny Boy Storage as well as the Sunny Tripower Smart Energy.
BYD systems are modular: they consist of blocks that can be placed on top of one another to create larger batteries. The more blocks you have, the bigger the storage capacity. If needed you can add more blocks later on to increase the capacity.
Technical data concerning BYD HVS and HVM batteries can be found in the datasheet.
SMA Home Storage batteries
SMA's own lithium batteries are available in modules with a capacity of 3.28 kWh each. They have a more comprehensive performance warranty and can be charged and discharged up to 8000 times. Thesee batteries are compatible with the Sunny Tripower Smart Energy from a minimum of 2 modules (6,56 kWh) until a maximum of 5 modules (16,4 kWh)
You will find the datasheet for the SMA Home Storage here.
Why Lithium-ion batteries?
Zonnefabriek only installs high voltage Lithium-ion batteries. The voltage of these systems is always in the range of 100 Volts or more. Lithium-ion batteries have some advantages over classic lead batteries:
- They can be subject to deeper 'depths of discharge' than lead batteries without the risk of damage. That means that a larger part of the available capacity can be used to store solar power.
- They can be charged and discharged many times without losing efficiency. For many other types of batery the efficiency quickly goes down when they experience many 'cycles'. Lithium-ion bateries often maintain a high efficiency even after thousands of cycles.
- They have a high energy density: that means that they are relatively small and compact while still offering large storage capacity. That makes it easier to install them in residential systems.
Get ready for the future in 3 steps
With the net metering arragement coming to an end in the future, it is becoming more and more attractive to invest in batteries and products that can increase your 'self consumption'. Our advice is to prepare yourself for he future step by step.
Optimising the use of your own clean solar power doesn't happen in one go. See it as a project with different elements that can be added over time. For people with SMA inverters in their system, starting with the addition of a Sunny Home Manager would be the logical first step.
The Sunny Home Manager manages your equipment on the basis of weather forecasts and the load profile in your home, in order to maximise the use of your own solar power. With this you can learn more about your load profile and figure out how much battery capacity would suit your needs.
As soon as it becomes an interesting proposition, you can add a home storage system. That allows you to temporarily store your excess power for use later in the day or night. Since the Sunny Home Manager has given you insight into your load profile, you know how much battery capacity you need. The Sunny Home Manager is the perfect manager for your battery system.
If you are interested in a battery system then please contact us. We are getting more and more demand for home storage systems and have already installed them all over the country. Want to know what your options are? please give us a call or send us an e-mail and we'll be happy to discuss the possibilities with you.