This morning I was introduced to the all in one solar energy solution created and developed by Sigenergy which is a Singapore manufacturer. I was at the Solar Company because I was having my faulty battery looked at and will most likely be replaced tomorrow or early next week. The difference between Sigenergy and everyone else is rather obvious as the space that this all in one home power unit takes up is roughly 1/4 of what I have and inside is the latest technology.
In the picture above the top pod is the inverter and the pods below are the batteries which seamlessly click together forming one complete unit. thee units are all stackable and makes life so much easier. There is no extra cabling required which not only saves on the installation time, but also from having to buy the cables.
Another feature of this system is when the power from the grid is dropped this takes less than a milli second to kick in so there are no outages or surges and you would never even know. One can also supply the grid directly from this system and is grid ready if your grid allows this which ours doesn't as yet. There is so much more this new technology offers yet this is all above my pay grade so bear with me whilst I attend the courses and learn.
The cost is roughly 3 % more than competitive units, but when you add up the installation time saved and the no extra cabling it is roughly the same exact price as all the other units offering the equivalent Kwh.
We know technology is always evolving and battery sizes is where the real change is taking place. My home power plant has 4 x 5Kwh batteries and a battery half that size now offers 8Kwh. I guess within the next 2 years that same size will now become a 10Kwh battery.
Just in comparison to show you what a big difference this is from my system below which is 4Kwh smaller in battery storage than the one above.
As you can see it takes up the entire space of this small outside room and I will be adding one more battery making a total of 5 for now. This would be far easier under the Sigenergy solution as it would just mean clipping another battery into the stack.
My interest in all of this type of green energy has grown since my installation and today had my installer making the house more energy efficient by removing and replacing items that were not working or in use yet still drew current. The under floor heating which I have never even used was draining current from the mains so that was disconnected from the distribution board.
We have decided to keep the geyser/boiler on the solar system drawing directly from the sun during the day and should stay hot enough for the evening period. The removal and replacement of all the outside spot lights that were not working which blew the first time we had load shedding due to a surge in power has cost a bomb and this two day fix making a more energy efficient house will cost around $2K. Not so bad when I was going to spend that amount on converting the geyser to solar and why the change of plan now.
The installer now believes by the time we get the 4th battery replaced we should be entirely off the grid. If not it will be close and another 6 solar panels will go up next week just in case. When you are this close to getting away from the power supplier then you may as well go all in.
Solar reminds me so much about crypto as there are so few people involved and this is still very early. I do think within the next 10 years this industry will explode and between 30 and 50 % of residential property will have some type of solar installation. The topic of carbon is going to be forced on all of us and what our footprint looks like and green energy is one way of counteracting this.