The SolarMax P-Battery Upgrade Kit allows for storing solar energy with the help of a battery and therefore an optimization of the self-consumption in the private customer segment.

The Swiss inverter manufacturer Sputnik Engineering has developed the SolarMax P-Battery Upgrade Kit for P series inverters in order to allow for storage and optimized self-consumption of solar energy. In this way, the solar energy generated during the day can be stored intermediately in a battery and used in the evening or during the night, for instance. The P-Battery Upgrade Kit is designed for solar power plants of up to 6kWp and is therefore applicable first and foremost to private plants on single-family homes and multiple dwellings. With the help of the battery, the self-consumption can be increased significantly and the public power grid can be relieved simultaneously. Within the framework of Intersolar Europe in Munich, SolarMax will present the prototype of its self-consumption and storage solution for the first time.

Self-consumption and the storage of solar energy play an increasingly important role with respect to power supply. In some countries - particularly in Germany - already today, it is more cost-efficient to generate your own electricity than to buy it from energy suppliers. In these cases it is more efficient to consume the generated electricity yourself. By moving and activating loads in a targeted manner (load management), the energy consumption can be optimized by switching on controllable loads (e.g. heating cartridges or heat pumps) when large amounts of electricity are available or when lower amounts of electricity are required (e.g. at midday).

Furthermore, the P-Battery Upgrade Kit can be used to charge a battery with solar energy during the day so that the energy is available in times of lower or no PV electricity generation. The plant operator can select how the battery is charged and/or discharged by selecting from different modes, for instance depending on the consumption, the time, or in order to relieve the grid (Peak Shaving). Depending on the size of the battery, the stored solar energy may even be sufficient for a couple of days without the necessity of drawing electricity from the grid. The P-Battery Upgrade Kit will be compatible with a number of different battery types.

"We developed the P-Battery Upgrade Kit in order to enable private plant operators to easily store solar energy and therefore to optimize their self-consumption," explains Hans-Georg Schweikardt, Head of Product Management with SolarMax. "A positive side effect is related to the much discussed topic of grid fluctuations, because thanks to the energy storage it is possible to relieve the grid in the event of high solar irradiation. Accordingly, the inverters must no longer disconnect from the grid or reduce their output due to grid parameters."

According to the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE), plant operators can reduce the energy they procure from the public grid by up to 60 percent when using battery storage solutions. This makes them more independent of the strongly increasing energy prices and provides for an essential contribution to energy turnaround.

Since the beginning of May, storing solar energy is funded by the German government for PV power plants installed after January 1, 2013 in order to further drive the expansion of renewable energies and simultaneously relieve the public power grid.

The SolarMax P-Battery Upgrade Kit for the P series will be presented within the framework of Intersolar Europe 2013 in hall B4 / booth 110, along with the numerous other new SolarMax inverter Solutions.