Enphase getting into storage systems...

[Ian S]

See here:

Solar Power International 2014 Booth 812 -- Enphase Energy, Inc . (NASDAQ:ENPH), announced today its Enphase AC Battery, an advanced energy storage solution with a modular, plug-and-play storage device fully integrated with the just-introduced Enphase Energy Management System. Based on a distributed architecture, the AC Battery is a safe, reliable and easy-to-install storage solution, designed for residential and commercial applications. The modular battery provides system owners with the ability to store solar energy for nighttime or future use, optimizing solar power consumption and giving owners greater energy independence.

Battery chemistry:

After an extensive evaluation of different energy storage companies and battery chemistries, we chose lithium iron phosphate and ELIIY Power. The batteries long cycle life, high performance and safety features, as well as the companys impeccable quality standards, fit in well with Enphases strong commitment to reliability, performance and continuous improvement.

[SunEagle]

See here:



Battery chemistry:

Interesting. What is the cost and life expectancy of those batteries?

[PVAndy]

Interesting. What is the cost and life expectancy of those batteries?

I was fortunate enough to hear about this product under nondisclosure. To the best of my knowledge the pricing hasn't been released yet.

Andy

[SunEagle]

I was fortunate enough to hear about this product under nondisclosure. To the best of my knowledge the pricing hasn't been released yet.

Andy

They claim the storage is good for 1.2kWh with a standard load of 275watts and peak of 550watts. Even if you used 80% of that battery it is not much power so those batteries better be low in price which I suspect they are not.

[nomadh]

Anyone know if this battery system can be used to "start up" some of the micro inverters during daytime to give you downed grid power? It seems possible that a unit like this could inject a sinewave and communicate with inverters turning them on or off as needed by the load demand using the battery as a big buffer capacitor. Similar to sunnyboy on demand power. If it isnt too much money. Or if it even does it at all. Its been implied but does anyone know if it will have this ability.

[SunEagle]

Anyone know if this battery system can be used to "start up" some of the micro inverters during daytime to give you downed grid power? It seems possible that a unit like this could inject a sinewave and communicate with inverters turning them on or off as needed by the load demand using the battery as a big buffer capacitor. Similar to sunnyboy on demand power. If it isnt too much money. Or if it even does it at all. Its been implied but does anyone know if it will have this ability.

It takes more than providing a sine-wave to get grid tie inverters to work. As of now there isn't a device that can mimic the GRID and because there is a danger of solar pv "back-feeding" the grid when it is down and killing someone. I would believe there will be very high resistance in allowing a device to be marketed.

[PVAndy]

It takes more than providing a sine-wave to get grid tie inverters to work. As of now there isn't a device that can mimic the GRID and because there is a danger of solar pv "back-feeding" the grid when it is down and killing someone. I would believe there will be very high resistance in allowing a device to be marketed.

SunEagle I respectively disagree. I have designed and installed systems both with Enphase Microinverters, Power One & SunnyBoy String Inverters that operate in a Grid Tied Hybrid mode. Outback models like the Radian and the SMA Sunny Island can both produce AC clean enough to start a string or microinverter. In both cases they have internal transfer relays that serve to disconnect the inverters from the grid when the "simulated grid" is up. This is commonly referred as AC Coupling.
At this point I can't say more about the Enphase product as I am under nondisclosure with them.

Andy
NABCEP Certified PV Installation Professional
Solar Design Engineer

[SunEagle]

SunEagle I respectively disagree. I have designed and installed systems both with Enphase Microinverters, Power One & SunnyBoy String Inverters that operate in a Grid Tied Hybrid mode. Outback models like the Radian and the SMA Sunny Island can both produce AC clean enough to start a string or microinverter. In both cases they have internal transfer relays that serve to disconnect the inverters from the grid when the "simulated grid" is up. This is commonly referred as AC Coupling.
At this point I can't say more about the Enphase product as I am under nondisclosure with them.

Andy
NABCEP Certified PV Installation Professional
Solar Design Engineer

Andy

You are correct. Thank you for correcting my post.

There are some high end hybrid systems that have the right isolating equipment to prevent back-feeding the grid yet still allow the pv panels to generate power. They cost a lot and aren't really considered by most people that just want their panels to provide full power when the grid goes down.

I got the impression that nomadh was looking for a simple device to "fool" the grid tie inverters to work when the grid was down instead of using a fully designed hybrid system that you have hands on experience.

[PVAndy]

Andy

You are correct. Thank you for correcting my post.

There are some high end hybrid systems that have the right isolating equipment to prevent back-feeding the grid yet still allow the pv panels to generate power. They cost a lot and aren't really considered by most people that just want their panels to provide full power when the grid goes down.

I got the impression that nomadh was looking for a simple device to "fool" the grid tie inverters to work when the grid was down instead of using a fully designed hybrid system that you have hands on experience.

Lol I didn't say they are cheap! Typically just the "off grid" inverter costs 3 - 7K. And the designs which at first seem simple are anything but. The installation and programming (yes there is a lot of programming) are typically 100 to 200 pages long (and hard to read)

[inetdog]

Anyone know if this battery system can be used to "start up" some of the micro inverters during daytime to give you downed grid power? It seems possible that a unit like this could inject a sinewave and communicate with inverters turning them on or off as needed by the load demand using the battery as a big buffer capacitor. Similar to sunnyboy on demand power. If it isnt too much money. Or if it even does it at all. Its been implied but does anyone know if it will have this ability.

I still have not seen any documentation to the effect that the new Enphase system with storage can be used in an off grid mode. The website touts it as ideal for use with a POCO connection that does not allow sell back into the grid. So it can instead store excess energy in the battery and provide it back through the grid tie when needed once the sun is down.
That would not take particularly sophisticated engineering, not much change in the hardware of the micro-inverter units. Beyond the CC and storage, the biggest additional requirement for the system would have to be a current transformer and voltage probe arrangement to allow it to detect the amount of power being drawn from the grid. As that number approaches zero, it would divert panel energy from the inverter to the CC.

The same power sensing equipment, if placed downstream of a transfer switch, would allow the unit to be used safely in conjunction with a generator that takes the place of the grid.

PS: The idea that the Enphase storage system, even if it can be used in an off-grid mode, could be used to "jump start" a system of conventional microinverters would still be a failure because it would have no way to throttle the output of the normal GTI inverters. The best it could do would be to reduce its own output to keep the effective load above the GTI output. Once the load goes below the current output of the conventional GTIs alone the system will fail, either gracefully by shutting down completely, or catastrophically by letting out magic smoke.
I doubt that the system includes an AC input CC which would allow it to suck up extra GTI output (until the batteries get full!), but if does it becomes much more interesting.

[kwilcox]

...and as such, from a design perspective (implementation perspective still tbd however), it'll pretty much be precisely what those of us facing increasingly hostile POCO tariffs are looking for.

[CA_Tom]

[B]
I doubt that the system includes an AC input CC which would allow it to suck up extra GTI output (until the batteries get full!), but if does it becomes much more interesting.

From what I can tell, the system ONLY has an AC input/output - the "Engage" cable.

http://enphase.com/wp-uploads/enphase.com/2014/10/Enphase-AC-Battery-Brochure-1.pdf

So if the only connection is the AC line, then it must have an AC input CC.

It seems to me that with just a little extra intelligence it could be setup to do an off-grid mode. It'd need an extra box near the main panel to make sure it was isolated from the grid (for safety). And it'd probably need some extra intelligence to be able to start a sine wave (vs. matching an existing one.) And some intelligence to talk with the other microinverters and coordinate inverter output / battery charging to keep the voltage stable.

I don't see anything in that brochure that indicates that's what they've done. And I don't know that there's a big enough market to make it worthwhile to do that. But i don't think it's impossible.

[inetdog]

I still have not seen any documentation to the effect that the new Enphase system with storage can be used in an off grid mode.[/B] The website touts it as ideal for use with a POCO connection that does not allow sell back into the grid. So it can instead store excess energy in the battery and provide it back through the grid tie when needed once the sun is down.
That would not take particularly sophisticated engineering, not much change in the hardware of the micro-inverter units. Beyond the CC and storage, the biggest additional requirement for the system would have to be a current transformer and voltage probe arrangement to allow it to detect the amount of power being drawn from the grid. As that number approaches zero, it would divert panel energy from the inverter to the CC.

The same power sensing equipment, if placed downstream of a transfer switch, would allow the unit to be used safely in conjunction with a generator that takes the place of the grid.

PS: The idea that the Enphase storage system, even if it can be used in an off-grid mode, could be used to "jump start" a system of conventional microinverters would still be a failure because it would have no way to throttle the output of the normal GTI inverters. The best it could do would be to reduce its own output to keep the effective load above the GTI output. Once the load goes below the current output of the conventional GTIs alone the system will fail, either gracefully by shutting down completely, or catastrophically by letting out magic smoke.
I doubt that the system includes an AC input CC which would allow it to suck up extra GTI output (until the batteries get full!), but if does it becomes much more interesting.

[nomadh]

Duplicate

[nomadh]

I still have not seen any documentation to the effect that the new Enphase system with storage can be used in an off grid mode. The website touts it as ideal for use with a POCO connection that does not allow sell back into the grid. So it can instead store excess energy in the battery and provide it back through the grid tie when needed once the sun is down.
That would not take particularly sophisticated engineering, not much change in the hardware of the micro-inverter units. Beyond the CC and storage, the biggest additional requirement for the system would have to be a current transformer and voltage probe arrangement to allow it to detect the amount of power being drawn from the grid. As that number approaches zero, it would divert panel energy from the inverter to the CC.

The same power sensing equipment, if placed downstream of a transfer switch, would allow the unit to be used safely in conjunction with a generator that takes the place of the grid.

PS: The idea that the Enphase storage system, even if it can be used in an off-grid mode, could be used to "jump start" a system of conventional microinverters would still be a failure because it would have no way to throttle the output of the normal GTI inverters. The best it could do would be to reduce its own output to keep the effective load above the GTI output. Once the load goes below the current output of the conventional GTIs alone the system will fail, either gracefully by shutting down completely, or catastrophically by letting out magic smoke.
I doubt that the system includes an AC input CC which would allow it to suck up extra GTI output (until the batteries get full!), but if does it becomes much more interesting.

It seems that this product is very close doing offgrid power. It doesn't need a lot of extra cost to do this. Sunnyboy is including the feature at no real extra cost. The microinvertes have some intelligence and a unit like this could sense a load and then turn on or off inverters to match with the battery as a buffer. 1 battery for a small buffer and 2 or 3 for a pretty big buffer to handle things like a fridge.
I think the extra cost could be negligible but there seems no interest in this country. Frankly it has me log jammed. I find it stupid that if I have 6kw on my roof I should be able to use it somewhat in an emergency. Without a lot of extra cost. I don't need to run my whole house. It doesn't need to be super convenient. Power during the daytime only is ok. It should be optimized for shade all the rest of the time. I shouldn't have to buy something like enphase or solar edge THEN also buy a sunnyboy inverter and its wiring to store in my garage just in case an extended grid down period. But I think this is still a better answer than a triple priced inverter and doubling the price of my system again with batteries and then costing me 50% again in 7 years to replace my batteries and in 7 years again.
I was all set to buy the agnostic solar edge power power optimizers and then the sunny boy inverter but those power optimizers aren't available in the U.S. Like I said total logjam.