Developed in partnership with solar and energy storage installers to optimize equipment and streamline cost calculations, SimpliPhi Power has released a complete plug-and-play Energy Storage System (ESS) that easily integrates power storage into new and existing solar installations both on and off grid. SimpliPhi's fully integrated solution includes the company's battery technology combined with a Schneider Electric inverter charge controller and associated power electronics and system management in one elegant box. Pre-programmed software settings and system performance monitoring round out the solution. By eliminating any ventilation or active cooling requirements, SimpliPhi's new all-in-one ESS can be safely installed both outside and inside.
"Mitigating the impact of power outages, the increase in distributed renewable generation at times of low use, the rising costs of base and peak power and the trend to reduce or eliminate net metering programs is opening up opportunities for solar installers to offer storage as an integral part of their solutions. Many solar installers are not battery experts, yet this expertise is what is required to select equipment to design a system that optimally integrates energy storage. We wanted to offer them an all-in-one-box solution to simplify the prospect of adding storage to meet their customer's needs," said SimpliPhi CEO Catherine Von Burg. "Installers collaborated with us on the design of this new product because they were frustrated by the lack of product readiness, adaptability and scalability, as well as the needless complexity offered by other manufacturers with cooling and thermal regulation requirements. We worked together to combine best-in-class technologies into one plug-in box that can scale without the need of ventilation, cooling or the risk of thermal runaway characteristic of other lithium ion storage technologies."
SimpliPhi assembles all the equipment into the ESS box and ships it out as a plug-and-play solution. The ESS offers three software modalities that meet the requirements of different applications, such as new and retrofit systems, including solutions that utilities can access for asset monitoring and deployment off-site for grid stabilization.
"SimpliPhi's ESS was developed to help solve many energy storage pain-points that installers have with other storage systems," said Michelle Klassen, president of LkM Solutions, who has also partnered with SimpliPhi in the development of the product. "This is why the ESS comes pre-integrated to work with microinverter, self-consumption and net-metered systems, for example."
With the first units headed to Hawaii, a full roll out of the ESS begins in the fall of 2016 for residential and commercial installers.
"Here in Hawaii, we were searching for a storage solution with lower installed costs that was faster and easier to install in more places than what was available to us. For our customers, the ability to install the SimpliPhi ESS outside gives us a major competitive advantage when bidding projects," said Mike Paul, president of Apex Electric, who also collaborated with SimpliPhi on product development.
PimpliPhi Power will be displayed at Solar Power International, held at the Las Vegas Convention Center on September 12-15, 2016.