The widely anticipated Enphase AC Battery is now available in New Zealand!
Over the next 12 months Enphase will be distributing 70,000 battery units in New Zealand and Australia.
The Enphase AC Battery is a small, modular battery in comparison to other units on the market, and it is set at an affordable price. You can start by installing one unit and adding more units as you go, or if you are unsure of how many/the size of battery storage you may need, you can cautiously add more as you go.
The battery units are rated at 1.2kWh, with 1.18kWh being usable. They allows 95% depth of discharge. They weigh in at 25kg each and are expected to be mounted in appropriate areas of the home, such as a garage wall. More specs here.
As a plug and play battery unit, it makes for ease of use, Enphase are gaining a reputation for making their products user friendly, as their micro-inverters also simplify the process of installation.
Most importantly, they work easily with solar power systems that have micro-inverters. All batteries require stored power to be in the form of DC energy. But the power coming from solar panels with micro-inverters is AC. So, as well as storing your power, these little units will convert your AC solar power to DC to store the energy, and then convert the power back to AC when you are drawing power from the battery, following? Phew.
The idea of having battery storage at home combined with solar panels on your roof is that you can store the power you produce from the solar panels during the day. Then at night, when your power consumption is high (using cooking appliances, lighting, digital devices and heating), you can instead draw from your reserved solar power instead of using power from the grid.
For this system to work efficiently you will need the Enphase S-Metered Envoy, the brains behind the system. It monitors your power consumption and solar power generation, and it informs the systems on if/when solar power should go straight to appliances, or to go to the battery, or simply be sent to the grid.
You can also start by installing the Enphase S-Metered which will give the you the data to help determine the optimal battery system size you will need in your home. Enphase is definitely making it easy to join the solar storage revolution.
I have a 2.9 kW enphase battery ready solar array on grid with genesis. I have a 2 phase power supply. One my frustrations is the solar panels only supply one phase even when the solar output exceeds the demand on both phases. Could I install an enphase battery which will supply both phases before drawing any electricity from the grid?