SunVault™ Solar Energy Back-Up & Solar Energy Storage
With the increasing unpredictability of NJ weather and increased incidents of power outages, Green House Solar highly recommends our solar customers consider the addition of solar powered battery backup. With these systems, your solar panel array can continue to power your home through outages that last hours, days, or even weeks*, adding even more value to your solar panel system.
Unlike gas powered generator systems, you don’t need to worry about buying gas, or hooking up a noisy generator in the middle of a storm. Solar backup systems can not only provide you virtually instant backup power switchover but they enable your solar panels, to continue working during the outage, providing additional power and battery charging whenever the sun is out.
Green House Solar installs both the Sunpower Equinox series of Solar Backup for new systems, and the Sonen ecoLinx series for homes with existing solar array’s. Both systems are absolutely world class in terms of features and battery life. Sonen even offers a system that will switchover in less than 100ms, fast enough to prevent your office computers from crashing!
Solar Battery Backup is one of the most exciting technology additions to going solar, and new developments have made these backup systems smaller and more design forward for integration into your home as elegant conversation pieces, with a serious functional purpose.
Please contact the team at Green House Solar for more information on Solar Battery Backup Options for your home today!
Green House Solar is the first solar company in NJ to install the SunPower SunVault storage system!
Your solar power panels generate electricity during the day and
use that energy to power your home and charge the SunVault™ Storage system. With this battery storage system, you can easily control the usage of energy throughout your home, no matter what is going on outside. To learn about the ins and out of SunPower’s SunVault storage system, watch the short video below.
Even in an outage, you won’t feel powerless.
Don’t let bad weather, rolling blackouts or unexpected outages put your life on hold. SunPower® solar and storage solutions can help. By adding battery storage to your solar system, you can control how much energy is saved and when it’s used—so your lights can stay on, your phones can charge and your refrigerator can stay cold. Any extra electricity is sent to the grid.
One question we get a lot is “Will my Solar work when the power goes out?” Most of the Solar installed today is tied to the standard electrical grid. It needs the electric grid to be up and running to work and likewise It shuts down when the power goes out to protect linemen the same way a generator transfer switch works.
That being said; the answer simply is no. Your solar will not work when the power goes out… at least not without some kind of home energy storage solutions, or specifically a solar battery backup system.
How It Works:
Solar Storage Batteries
Storage Batteries are becoming increasingly more popular these days, and there are a lot of misconceptions about them as well. For starters, they are not just batteries. There are other components that allow the batteries to work the way you need them to. They are not “one size fits all,” and they do not offer the same “return on investment” benefits as Solar itself does. We at Green House Solar like to educate our customers on what to expect from their home energy storage solutions. We have also found ourselves in a position of clarifying some of these misconceptions provided by other solar firms, typically the “big box” ones.
There are many different battery chemistries from lead-acid to absorbed glass mat to lithium. There are advantages to each, but the durability of lithium has made it the most popular as of late, especially because of the amount of cycles (charges and discharges) you can get from this product. The cycling you get from lithium makes it easier to control from an app and keeps it simple with little to no maintenance. There are three different ways you can use your Home Energy Storage Solution, and it’s important to understand the differences to understand how it can make sense for you.
1. Battery Backup
You can store power to be used during a power outage. The batteries will take over when the power goes out. They will have a limited capacity ranging from 6-20 kilowatt hours (kwh), for a typical home. This is typically not enough to power an entire home however you can ration your energy consumption accordingly. Depending on how many kwh your solar panels can produce per day will depend on how many kwh your batteries can store per day. But the great thing about solar backup is that the batteries can keep recharging indefinitely, as long as you pace your energy usage until the power is back.
2. Self-Consumption or Off-Grid
You can store power to be used when your Solar output isn’t enough to cover your electric consumption, and you can ration your consumption to be completely independent of the grid. Self-Consumption Mode does give you the safety net of working in conjunction with the grid at all times, in case solar output isn’t enough. For complete off-grid electricity, you can consider a hybrid system that includes both solar and generator backup. The Green House Solar team are experts at sizing and installing these kinds of systems.
3. Energy Storage for peak demand shaving
This means you would use your battery to store power to offset utility demand charges. This is not yet an issue for homes in NJ, but many states out west are facing tiered rates and anti-net metering laws. The power you generate during the day costs less than the power you use in peak evening hours (when everyone gets home from work and uses more electricity). Having home energy storage solution would allow you to store your power to offset utility charges at peak times.
For those who already have solar and are interested in a full featured solution that can retrofit on to your existing solar system, Green House Solar recommends and installs the Sonnen backup battery system.
Green House Solar are NJ Experts on Solar Battery Backup Systems
Feel free to call us and set up an appointment to discuss Solar and/or battery storage. We sell the best quality equipment on the market. We are Sonnen Certified and we’ve been working with solar battery systems for well over a decade. Let us help you figure out how home energy storage solutions can work for you.
Call Green House Solar Today!
973.986.2844
*Actual length of power availability will depend to some extent on the sun shining! Battery backup solutions by Greenhouse are sized for your budget and a minimum duration based on reduced energy usage during the typical outage.
