We have had a lot of interest from our customers in knowing whether home battery systems work automatically or if they need to be controlled by the owner. There are actually three answers to this particular question.
Tanjent’s PowerBanx X battery storage, in black enclosure, for use with a Sofar or Victron inverter (Image: Tanjent)
Automatic Charging from Solar
All home battery systems that we supply will charge from solar completely automatically. That is to say, once installed and correctly connected up to the home consumer unit and grid connection they will automatically charge up from excess solar generated electricity. They will also automatically discharge and power the house when the solar panels are not generating enough electricity, so as to save the owner from buying grid electricity.
No manual intervention is required, and the process is entirely invisible to the owner (apart from lower electricity bills of course!).
Automatic Charging from Fixed Time Cheap Electricity
All home battery systems that we supply are capable of charging from cheap electricity, but they do need to be setup appropriately. In most cases this just means that you need to tell the system when the cheap electricity is available. For example, if you have an Economy 7 tariff you need to tell the system (usually through the screen on the inverter) when the cheap hours are, e.g. 0030 to 0730. Or if you have Octopus Go you might tell it 0100 to 0500.
We have detailed blogs covering the process for three of our product lines:
- Sofar inverter via the inverter
- SolaX inverter via the inverter or online portal
- Victron inverter via the inverter or remote console
Automatic Charging from Varying Time Cheap Electricity
Installed GivEnergy battery system (Image: GivEnergy)
Some energy companies are starting to introduce cheap electricity tariffs that vary their costs day by day. Octopus is ahead on this, and its Agile tariff is becoming increasingly popular. We have recently introduced a battery system using a GivEnergy inverter that can integrate with the Agile tariff and time its charging to match the cheapest Agile periods each day. Get in touch with us if you’d like to know more about this system.
