Time to read: 11 minutes
Welcome back to our two-part post on batteries and generators!
In our last post in this series, IES PV Design Engineer Kevin Marceski gave us a look at how important batteries and generators are in a Solar Powered System. In part 2, Kevin helps us explore the kinds of batteries that IES Texas Solar uses in addition to the incredible Enphase inverters that go with them.
What types of batteries and inverters does IES Texas Solar use?
“Enphase is our workhorse here. That’s what we depend on for a lot of our installations. Microinverters are our bread and butter; about 90% of our installations use microinverters and that’s mostly because we see them as the front runner for the residential market and, coincidentally, Enphase has its own energy storage option. They have their own battery ecosystem that is effectively tied in with their microinverters. They also have a transfer switch or a smart switch that goes with those batteries.”
Kevin takes a moment to debunk a common misconception about solar panels while addressing the safety concerns that go with it.
“People might have the misconception that when they’re getting solar panels on their roof that it’s tied into their house, and when the power goes out that they will still have power in their house. Unfortunately, that is not the case for the vast majority of products on the market right now. There are safety measures put into place with the solar panels so that if the utility goes down, there is no power in the lines. There is a protocol put in place that all solar inverters, when the power goes off and there is no longer a voltage source from the utility company, the solar panels shut down so they make sure there is no power being fed from your house to the utility company and onto those lines. In order to get the power back up, the company sends out linemen to repair wherever the damage is or to take care of the cause of the outage.”
“They need to be absolutely sure that there is no power in the lines that the linemen are working on. If any power was being put through those lines, it would be very hazardous or even fatal to the line workers. This is absolutely necessary. I know a lot of people are really disappointed when they first hear that, because a lot of people would like the panels to become self-sufficient in that way, but it does require that little bit of extra investment, and that’s where batteries shine.”
“Batteries give you that ability to, when the grid goes out, create an isolated microgrid in your house with your batteries and panels. You can charge your batteries with your solar panels and the everything stays on. That’s definitely something that is necessary for people to know, and I think that there has been a lot of misinformation in the industry over the past few years that if you only have solar panels on your roof you’re totally fine. That isn’t always exactly the case.”
“It’s not something that is always very intuitive. Not many people think that there are folks out there working on those lines or that there might be the potential hazard of power being fed onto them. The manufacturers in the solar industry have really made safety the primary concern, whether that’s safety for the homeowner, the safety of the folks that are installing those solar panels, or even safety for the folks that are working in the utility sector. Safety is the number one priority.”
“That’s actually the inspiration for a lot of the innovation in the industry over the past few years. That’s the reason for the big push and why batteries have become more commonplace. People know that if you have solar panels, you want to be self-sufficient during those grid outages. Specifically addressing that desire, Enphase just came out with something that is an industry first. The IQ sunlight backup feature, which uses a brand new line of micro inverters; the IQ 8 micro inverters.”
On the topic of Enphase micro inverters
“What sets Enphase apart from other inverter companies is that they have micro inverters. Each panel has its own inverter and if something fails, then that panel is the only panel that goes down. When I used to work as a service manager, a lot of the products we were working with were string inverter systems–systems that all connect to a single inverter. Brands like Solaredge, SMA, Fronius, and a handful of other companies all rely on string inverters. If there was ever an issue with the string inverter, your entire 20, 30, 50 panel system is shut down. With Enphase, however, if there is an issue with the inverter, it’s going to affect at most just one panel at a time for that same inverter. That’s something that has always separated Enphase from the competition and it’s one of the reasons that we support them so greatly. If you’re going to have decentralized energy, you should also have a decentralized point of failure too. You don’t want to have just one point of failure that makes your entire array useless on your roof.”
“With the IQ 8 inverters coming out right now, their big product offering is that they integrate with that smart switch we were talking about before. What that allows them to do is when the power goes out, the IQ 8 micro inverters, without having any battery backups in the system, are allowed to turn back on. The smart switch isolates the house from the grid and creates your own microgrid. With this microgrid, you are able to instantaneously power any load you have on the house as long as you have sunlight to power those loads.”
“This is really exciting, because it gives a solution to the question of ‘I have solar panels on my roof, why can’t I just power my home?’ in a grid failure situation. This is a direct answer to that question. It’s very cool to see. In practice, it does require a little bit of patience and balance on the engineering side just because you need to understand that you have that backup situation when there’s sunlight, but if there’s anything that is blocking that sunlight or if you have less production on a certain day or time of the year, then you aren’t going to get that same reliability a battery provides.”
Battery brands
“One of the other battery brands that we offer right now is a company called Storz Power. Storz Power has developed their own proprietary battery system and they’ve made strategic partnerships with already established inverter and energy management companies. They have their own batteries that they pair with a Sol-Ark inverter, which they also pair with a Lumin smart panel.”
“Sol-Ark is a very robust company that I cannot stop singing praises about. As much as I love Enphase, Sol-Ark is a product that we’re really proud to sell. They are a veteran owned and operated company based in Texas, and are probably one of the most robust inverters on the market. They worked strictly for military contracts up until about five or so years ago. While doing so they developed some very impressive innovations to make sure strategically essential equipment stayed on when there was a grid failure or absence of power. Everything from bases to silos could be powered by the Sol-Ark and it became the military’s go-to for the application.”
“Sol-Ark offers a line of inverters that are EMP hardened too, so if the worst possible scenario were to ever come, Sol-Ark has built this equipment to withstand an EMP blast to make sure that we’re still able to operate in a military capacity if that’s actually needed. Just a few years ago, they translated that into a consumer based product. While the vast majority of consumers don’t need that EMP hardened equipment, they do still sell that to consumers.”
“My point is that this is one of the inverters that we depend on for our more unique and robust custom battery solutions. To clarify, when I say custom solution, I would say 80% that are looking for a battery are definitely going to be happy and satisfied with our Enphase offerings which are in their own ways very much custom to each home. Enphase is a very consumer friendly company, and they’ve been in the residential consumer business for solar and batteries for decades. They have a lot of customer facing experience. But, there are those situations where multimillion dollar homes or complex off-grid situations require a bit more finesse or power here and there, a bit more customization; that’s where the Sol-Ark inverter with the storage batteries comes in and provides that solution for us.”
At this point, we’ve explored generators and batteries as well as the micro inverters used with this technology. Now that we’ve reached the end of our two-part post on batteries and generators, one question remains.
What gives IES Texas Solar the edge with batteries and generators?
“There are many manufacturers offering a bunch of different products here, and the products themselves are very intelligent. It’s become the pride of the industry that these products are pretty interchangeable when it comes down to it, but I think that really what affects the value of these products is in the design and detail.”
Attention to detail is a must, and IES Texas Solar excels at it.
“What IES Texas Solar has that their competitors don’t is their vital attention to detail. These are big purchases that people are making, especially when it comes to adding batteries onto systems. There were and still are a bunch of solar companies that were very fly by night that would sell you the panels, put them up on the roof, and then either run away or go out of business and you have no one to service it.”
System sizing is also a very important part of the process and, as Kevin puts it, many companies don’t even consider it when selling you a product.
“A lot of people will sell you these batteries without considering the system sizing concerns. They sell these products without doing a load calculation on what loads are being added to these batteries. That can be a big hazard for folks because you install those batteries, the solar panels are running, and everything looks fine until the first time you have a power outage and then everything shuts down and your batteries are useless. You end up sitting there in the dark wondering what happened. If you don’t have that attention to detail and design, if you aren’t making sure that before the project is installed that whatever load you’re putting onto this microgrid works, then you’re setting yourself up to fail. You need to make sure that everything is sized within the constraints of the equipment you’re buying. If you don’t have that kind of attention to detail, you’ll be sitting in the dark with a battery that’s showing you an overload error on the screen.”
“Going in and taking the time to sit down with customers is important. We have battery projects that go for a little longer than they might ordinarily for a regular solar job, but that’s because we’re sitting down with these homeowners and going through the design with them and point out ‘you might want this load, this load, and this load, but with the battery system you’re purchasing, we’re only going to be able to run x and y instead of x, y, and z’. At the end of the day, you’re buying that battery for reliability. You want to make sure that when everything else fails, your microgrid stays up and your power stays on with your battery system. We want to make sure that what we’re offering you, what we’re designing for you, is going to work in those times. We really put the time in and have that attention to detail.”
It’s never about making a quick buck. IES Texas is very honest with customers about systems and installations
“A big part of IES Texas Solar’s approach really comes down to honesty. Instead of just selling them a product with no concern for load sizes like other companies do, we sit down with customers and explain ‘we know that this is what you want, but unfortunately even with that, it may or may not provide those needs for you, so let’s whittle things down onto the more essential loads’. I’ve had a lot of customers want to have their entire home backed up on a $10,000 battery. That’s a lot of money, and I’m certain there are some companies out there that would sell them that $10,000 battery with no questions asked and then not pick up the phone if something fails. We want to sit down with them and make sure that we provide them with the kind of value they’re looking for, and that might mean managing those expectations a little more differently.”
“Making sure that those expectations are managed and having that attention to detail is something that sets IES Texas Solar apart. We plan at every step of the project to make sure that, from the time that we’re speaking to a new customer to the system being installed, they have the same achievable expectation in mind. There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors when it comes to these battery systems and knowing what the actual limitations of the devices are within your own microgrid is a really important thing for solar and energy companies to walk customers through and give that education to them.”
If you are considering switching to solar for your home or business, reach out to us by going to our website, iestxsolar.com, or by giving us a call at (855) 447-6527.
