Issues with electrical wiring when retrofitting a battery energy storage system

Most people that are looking at installing an energy storage system (battery and battery inverter) don’t realise that every installation is different and there is no one size fits all. Installations are very dependent on whether there is already solar PV in place and the current electrical wiring situation at the premises.

When you decide to connect a battery energy storage system to your already installed solar panels there are things that need to be considered that may not become apparent until the actual installation is to take place. These may make installing the battery system much more difficult, costly and time consuming but actually has nothing to do with the actual battery system itself.

When a house is built an electrician will have wired the house and hopefully the wiring meets current electrical standards at the time. However, electrical standards change over time and older houses may not have electrical wiring that meets current standards. Also, particularly with older houses wiring may become damaged or wear out over time.

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SoNick batteries support Radial Renewable Energy Park in Yarram

GridEdge is currently involved in a project to create a Renewable Energy Park at the Radial Timbers Sawmill in Yarram.

This project uses the GridEdge SoNick Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) and solar, added to a pyrolysis machine to create a “Bioenergy Cell” that provides power for the mill and further processes residual timber products into valuable bioproducts.

The battery installations are using 4 x 620V SoNick batteries in a SoNick Zebra container.

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The benefits of molten salt batteries

As we move towards a future that heavily relies on renewable energy sources and sustainable technologies, energy storage solutions play a crucial role. Molten salt batteries, also known as liquid metal batteries, have emerged as a promising option due to their unique characteristics and advantages. They are a type of rechargeable battery that uses molten salts as the electrolyte. Here are some of their benefits:

Enhanced Safety: Molten salt batteries generally have good safety characteristics. Safety needs to be a paramount concern when it comes to energy storage systems. Molten salt batteries excel in this aspect due to their inherent design. These batteries use metal electrodes and a molten salt electrolyte, which eliminates the risk of thermal runaway or explosions associated with some other battery chemistries. The materials used in molten salt batteries are non-flammable and non-toxic, making them inherently safe and reliable. The fact that molten salt batteries use non-flammable and non-toxic salts, further enhances their safety profile.

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You Must Do your Homework before purchasing energy storage batteries

One of the biggest problems with the efforts to use renewable energy to produce large amounts of the energy consumed on a daily basis has been its inability to reliably supply power at the times it is most needed. This can and will be addressed more commonly in the future with the installation of battery systems that allow households and businesses to store renewable energy for use in peak periods.

This avoids the need to use the power when you are buying it from the grid at a much higher cost.

With an energy storage battery you can utilise the majority of the output of your solar system and minimise these expensive evening electricity rates.

This is definitely a market that is set to thrive in 2023 and following years, however not all batteries are the same.  Most battery suppliers won’t tell you the downside of their batteries and will only tell you the things that are most likely to sell their batteries, so you need to ask questions and compare batteries.

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Advantages of SoNick battery for installations

Below is a summary of some of the differences between the SoNick battery and other battery technologies.

SoNick will not catch fire

The SoNick battery cannot catch fire or explode. It is the only chemistry UL9540A certified for safety from thermal runaway. This means no risk of fire or explosion, even in the presence of external fire.

All lithium-ion batteries have the potential to catch fire. Depending on the particular lithium-ion technology and safety features included with the battery, the ignition point may change, i.e. the ignition point for lithium ion phosphate is higher than that for lithium manganese cobalt.

If a battery installation is situated next to a building and the battery catches fire it is quite possible for the whole building to be burnt as a result of the difficulties associated with extinguishing lithium-ion fires. Also, when lithium batteries catch fire toxic fumes are given off.

SoNick capacity doesn’t degrade over service life

The SoNick battery doesn’t degrade over its service life. After 10 years you should still be operating at your original capacity.

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Using your SoNick battery, energy storage system in winter

During summer, when you have an energy storage system on your house, as long as it is sized correctly and you have enough solar PV, you should always be able to fill your batteries to full capacity on a daily basis. You will probably generate excess electricity and export it to the grid, although you will rarely be paid enough to justify this as a useful use of your green energy production system.

In summer, you can generally just ignore your energy storage system and it will cover as much of your power needs as you have designed the system to provide.

However, in winter the situation changes as the hours of solar generation decrease and the sun is lower in the sky, so often produces less PV generation on your solar panels. This is particularly relevant when you have several days in a row of rainy and / or cloudy weather with little to no PV generation. In order to maximise the solar PV available and get the most use from your batteries it may be a good idea to change the way your battery is utilised.

Instead of only filling your battery from solar which is the cheapest and most environmentally friendly way to fill a household battery you can fill it using off-peak power then using the battery system to provide electricity to your house during peak power usage times, often 3 – 9pm each day. Not as good as charging the battery with the sun but better than paying peak electricity rates.

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Brackenridge – Domestic Case Study using SoNick batteries

This domestic installation was designed to run as a grid minimisation installation. Although the grid remains connected it is rarely used.

This is an area with frequent power outages, often for many days so the ability to have power in an off-grid installation when the grid wasn’t available was a major requirement.

Sodium Nickel Chloride (SoNick) batteries were selected as they have the highest energy density of any batteries and are completely safe with no off-gassing or fire risk, meaning there are no safety issues with installing the batteries. As the SoNick batteries operate with no temperature effects and no degradation from -20°C to +60°C there are no issues with either heat or freezing temperatures that are often experienced and the batteries don’t require air conditioning to keep them cool or heaters to heat them enough for them to work.

Lithium-ion batteries weren’t considered due to the difficulty in recycling lithium batteries at end of life and to their inherent fire risk.

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Domestic Case Study using SoNick batteries – SA

This domestic installation in rural South Australia was designed to run as a grid minimisation installation. Although the grid remains connected it is rarely used to power the house, although excess power is exported to take advantage of the feed in tariff available.

Before the battery installation this household had a 5 kW solar PV system installed with a Fronius solar inverter.

The battery installation was done in stages as requirements changed.

The original battery installation had one 9.6 kWh SoNick battery with 2 Victron 3 KVa Multigrid inverters and a Victron colour controller for communication.

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MIGROS gets the largest salt battery storage facility in Switzerland

It’s great to see the newest installation of the #SoNick batteries in Switzerland by Innovenergy.

This installation is a 540 kWh salt battery storage system and now stands in the basement of MIGROS Schlieren/ZH. The molten salt batteries are 620V SoNick batteries supplied by FZSoNick and inverters by Indrivetec.

The SoNick batteries are charged with a large 806 KW solar PV system.

The purpose of the large-scale project is to save energy costs by optimising self-consumption. The other benefit is to maximise peak shaving which ensures the supermarket doesn’t have a lot of intermittent high energy draws which would increase energy bills substantially.

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Not all batteries are equal

With many households already having solar PV installations many people are now looking at energy storage systems to upgrade their home energy supply.

One of the most common questions is what battery is best for my needs. There is a lack of knowledge and a great amount of misinformation in the battery storage industry. It is critical to do your own homework and not just believe what salesman / installers are telling you as they are often restrained in their knowledge by the battery brand they are trying to sell.

In an effort to compare battery technologies a company called ITP renewables, in Canberra, set up a battery test site, https://batterytestcentre.com.au/ to conduct longitudinal performance testing of conventional and emerging battery technologies. This is an Arena funded testing facility set up to independently test and compare different battery technologies under Australian conditions for both performance and longevity for a 3 year period. This testing centre was first set up with Phase 1 in 2016 then phase 2 started in 2017. Originally it was for lithium-ion batteries only but now includes other technologies.

The SoNick battery is included in round 3 which started in 2019 and to date showing excellent results. 10 Previous 6 monthly reports are available from the test centre and can be download.at http://batterytestcentre.com.au/reports/

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