Sonnen introduced ecoLinx 30 with increased capacity and versatility for Residential Energy Storage
On June 16, 2020, sonnen announced the launch of the ecoLinx 30 intelligent energy storage system, providing a new, larger-capacity solution to the company’s eco-conscious, tech-forward customers. The ecoLinx 30 integrates sonnen’s intelligent, safe, and long-lasting battery chemistry with solar, leading automation platforms, and controllable breakers to provide the ultimate comprehensive solution for managing clean energy in the smart home.
The increased capacity of the sonnenecoLinx 30 can power homes for longer periods of time, granting access to a greater amount of on-site, clean energy available day and night. ecoLinx 30 can extend how long the home is powered with clean energy during peak periods, cloudy days, and beyond and can also offer increased resiliency during power outages along with the numerous additional benefits that result from using an intelligent battery to manage energy usage.
ecoLinx 30 features sonnen’s industry-leading warranty of 15,000 charge cycles/15 years as well as the same ability to add energy automation functionality as the existing ecoLinx product portfolio. And with a new, shorter and wider form factor, ecoLinx 30 provides greater flexibility and versatility for placing energy storage in and around the home.
By working with new or existing solar systems, leading automation platforms, and controllable breakers, ecoLinx 30 joins the existing portfolio of sonnen energy automation products in offering smart weather forecasting, smart configurable backup power, smart demand control, and load management to provide greater overall management of energy usage in the home. The sonnen ecoLinx 30 is also eligible for participation in growing “bring your own battery” programs that provide homeowners with access to cashback through select utilities when they share their battery’s excess clean energy for grid demand response programs.
“At sonnen, we adapt to the growing and changing market needs while still providing one of the safest, longest-lasting and most innovative energy management solutions. We are excited to offer the higher-capacity ecoLinx 30 that builds upon our sophisticated energy management platform, to meet the unique needs of our customers” said Jessica Weiss, National Business Development Manager for Energy Automation and A.I. at sonnen, Inc.
SolarEdge’s New Energy Hub Inverter intelligently connects Solar, Storage, & EV Charging
The innovative clean tech kids at SolarEdge launched a new inverter optimized for the integration of solar and energy storage. The new Energy Hub Inverter with Prism Technology takes SolarEdge’s 99% efficient HD-Wave inverter technology to the next level with the integration of DC-coupled StorEdge energy storage for a combined efficiency of an impressive 90.8%.
Image: SolarEdge
“As a next-generation backup solution, the Energy Hub Inverter is part of SolarEdge’s vision to change the way we power our world and our lives,” stated Lior Handelsman, VP of Marketing and Product Strategy. “By creating a centralized platform that coordinates energy production, storage, and consumption at a local level, we are transforming what is now a fragmented energy environment into a smart energy ecosystem that decreases waste, improves efficiency, reduces bills, all while being more convenient. This is a critical step in turning houses into smart energy homes and our grid into a smart grid.”
Planning for and integrating energy storage into the inverter up front eliminates the need to convert the DC power from a solar installation to AC and back to DC again to store it in a battery. The integration also streamlines installations as a second inverter to flip power from AC to DC and back for when the battery is no longer required. Additionally, the new Energy Hub Inverter plays nicely with SolarEdge’s new Smart EV charging as a solid foundation for the renewable, sustainable home of the future. The only thing is, it’s all available today.
Image: SolarEdge
The new Energy Hub Inverter can power just the essentials in a home through a power outage, or power the entire home, up to 200 amps. With all of the interconnections between the solar, multiple home batteries, and generators happening in the Energy Hub Inverter, the need to install a separate breaker panel for a generation panel is all but eliminated, saving homeowners money on non-value-add hardware and cutting installation times.
SolarEdge continues to lead the world in not just inverter technologies, but in delivering products that deliver on the promise of a sustainable, connected, and intelligent home of the future. It takes solar-powered homes beyond simply producing power into a completely new paradigm where the inverter serves as a fully-connected energy manager for the home, working to optimize the objectives of the homeowner 24/7.
On June 12, A+ Solar Solutions finished another installation in Eagle Bay.
This time we installed 6 Canadian Solar CS6K-315MS – SuperPower Mono PERC modules, and 8 Canadian Solar CS3U-380MS – KuMax Mono Split Cell modules on an east-facing roof, and 8 Canadian Solar CS3U-380MS – KuMax Mono Split Cell modules on a south-facing roof.
The modules were mounted on an SRM rail that was mounted on S-5-N clamps from S-5! without making any penetrations to the roof.
The 6 Canadian Solar CS6K-315MS – SuperPower Mono PERC modules are connected to 6 Enphase IQ7 microinverters and will roughly produce 1,754. kWh electricity a year.
The 8 Canadian Solar CS3U-380MS – KuMax Mono Split Cell modules on the east-facing roof are connected to 8 Enphase IQ7+ microinverters and will roughly produce 2,822 kWh electricity a year.
The 8 Canadian Solar CS3U-380MS – KuMax Mono Split Cell modules on the south-facing roof are connected to 8 Enphase IQ7+ microinverters and will roughly produce 3,366 kWh electricity a year.
On Monday, Chris Bileske Electric will finish the electrical part of the installation, which will enable my customer to start enjoying all the benefits of free, clean solar energy.
Interested in what A+ Solar Solutions can do for you? Call us at +1 250 515 6311 or send us an email at info@aplussolarsolutions.ca
A bifacial solar panel is a solar panel that can collect energy from the front side and the rear side (a normal monofacial panel only collects energy from one side). Bifacial solar technology was created in the latter 1960s. It was dormant while the broader PV market exploded. It was too costly forincremental energy production improvements.
Bifacial solar panels on trackers. Credit: NPC
A CleanTechnica field trip and series of articles a couple of years ago mentioned, though, that bifacial solar cells and panels are moving more seriously into play thanks to cost drops and efficiency improvements. A recent scientific article published in the journal Joule confirms our earlier belief that this technology has promise.
Technology that tilts panels so that they can follow the sun boosts the electricity production of normal solar panels. This solar tracking is used in some solar projects, especially large ones in certain regions, but hasn’t been used in most. Bifacial solar PV technology, however, can get an especially useful boost from solar tracking technology, capturing much more sunlight than a normal solar array ever could.
The new report, “Global Techno-Economic Performance of Bifacial and Tracking Photovoltaic Systems,” confirms that tilting toward the light, for optimal sunlight collection from both sides, can be the most cost-effective solar option to date. The report determined that this combination of technologies produces almost 35% more energy, on average, than immobile single-panel photovoltaic systems. This reduces the cost of electricity by an average of 16%.
“The results are stable, even when accounting for changes in the weather conditions and in the costs from the solar panels and the other components of the photovoltaic system, over a fairly wide range,” says first author Carlos Rodríguez-Gallegos, a research fellow at the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore, sponsored by the National University of Singapore. “This means that investing in bifacial and tracking systems should be a safe bet for the foreseeable future.”
The research article notes that most of the current PV installations use monofacial crystalline silicon PV modules with a fixed-tilt system setup. Things are going to change, though, as the more cost-competitive technology is apt to disrupt this dominance.
“The results reveal that bifacial-1T installations increase energy yield by 35% and reach the lowest Levelized Cost Of Energy (LCOE) for the majority of the world (93.1% of the land area). Although dual-axis trackers achieve the highest energy generation, their costs are still too high and are therefore not as cost-effective. Sensitivity analyses are also provided to show the general robustness of our findings.” Dual-axis trackers become more competitive as you get closer to the poles.
Dual-axis trackers become more competitive as you get closer to the poles.
Also, despite evidence that bifacial solar panels with single-axis tracking are more cost-efficient, Rodríguez-Gallegos doesn’t expect a rapid switch to this tech.
“The photovoltaics market is traditionally conservative,” he says. “More and more evidence points toward bifacial and tracking technology to be reliable, and we see more and more of it adopted in the field. Still, transitions take time, and time will have to show whether the advantages we see are attractive enough for installers to make the switch.
“As long as research continues to take place, the manufacturing costs of these materials are expected to keep on decreasing, and a point in time might be reached when they become economically competitive and you might see them on your roof,” says Rodríguez-Gallegos. “We then aim to be a step ahead of this potential future so that our research can be used as a guide for scientists, manufacturers, installers, and investors.”
Image: courtesy of Joule
Here’s a more detailed text summary from the report:
We find that bifacial installations with single-axis trackers reach the lowest LCOE almost everywhere (i.e., 93.1% of the total land area), while their monofacial counterparts achieve the lowest LCOE in only 3.1% of the land area. In addition, bifacial two-axis tracker installations reach the lowest LCOE only for remote areas very close to the poles, at latitudes beyond 70°, accounting for 3.8% of the total land area. Furthermore, monofacial single-axis trackers achieve the second lowest LCOE values for 87.9% of the land area.
On the one hand, these findings are explained by the fact that one-axis tracker systems generate comparably high yields (Figure 9), while requiring only marginally higher cost (Figure 10) compared with fixed-tilt installations. On the other hand, although two-axis tracker systems in general generate the highest yield, their considerably more expensive mounting structure (see Figures 7 and 10) outweighs the benefits in energy generation.
In addition, Figure 11 also reveals that, compared with conventional fixed-tilt installations, bifacial fixed-tilt installations feature higher LCOE values close to the equator (compare Figures 11A and 11B), whereas tracker installations with bifacial modules reach, in general, lower LCOE values compared with their monofacial counterparts (compare Figures 11C–11F).
After installing a 7,480 Wp solar array with 22 Canadian Solar CS3U-340P – KuMax Poly, Silver Frame modules and 6 QS1 Microinverter from APsystems, my customer in Eagle Bay decided to expand his solar array with 4 Canadian Solar CS3U-345P – KuMax Poly, Silver Frame modules.
Because all the wiring was already done last year, we only had to build a frame and mount 1 extra QS1 microinverter and 4 Canadian Solar CS3U-345P – KuMax Poly, Silver Frame modules.
On an annual basis, the 4 solar panels will roughly produce an extra 1,550 kWh of clean energy, which will reduce my customer’s electricity bill by $242.
Interested in what A+ Solar Solutions can do for you? Call us at +1 250 515 6311 or send us an email at info@aplussolarsolutions.ca
On June 8, 2020, A+ Solar Solutions finished the installation of an 8,200 Wp solar array.
The system contains 20 LG410N2W-V5 High-Efficiency NeON® 2 modules and 20 Enphase IQ7+ inverters.
LG guarantees the LG410N2W-V5 High-Efficiency NeON® 2 solar panels will produce no less than 90.1% of their nameplate power output after 25 years.
Apart from a stellar 25-year production warranty, LG also provides an industry-leading 25-year product warranty, which is among the top of industry standards.
The solar array was mounted on U1600-SBS Torch anchor, which provides a positive, watertight, manufacturer accepted attachment for torch-applied roofing systems.
In combination with the Enphase IQ 7+ micro-inverters – who also come with a solid 25-year product warranty – the customer does not have to worry about his solar array for the next 25 years.
Because solar arrays last for 30-35 years and require hardly any maintenance – cleaning the solar panels once or twice a year is preferred – investing in a solar array is a very safe investment and will make one untouchable for all the hikes in electricity rates to come.
Interested in what A+ Solar Solutions can do for you? Call us at +1 250 515 6311 or send us an email at info@aplussolarsolutions.ca
