Recently at the All Energy Conference in Melbourne, I spoke with engineers and installers about how Australia's fast growing solar and battery market is changing, and what really matters as systems get larger and more complex, reliability and safety. I spoke with Andrew from supplier partners, one of Sun grows clients, about how residential installations have changed recently:
"After sales, I found is something that was neglected by manufacturers for quite a while, because products used to be simple. You really just had to connect solar panels and connect the grid. You walked away. You were done. But products got a bit more tricky. You had to connect them to the internet. Then batteries got involved, then all these other services got involved, just making it far more complex and far more things that could go wrong. Even if the product was perfect, there are so many things that an installer could get wrong, so having someone there to support it has become more and more important. And Sungrow, were probably one of the earliest manufacturers to see a need to, I guess, maybe invest more in this space. Sungrow's had hybrid inverters for quite a while, but it's been in the last couple of years, they've released products that are far more capable when there is a blackout, able to back up a full house so people can just keep running as normal during a power outage. Two years ago, we had a really bad storm come through on Christmas Eve, and there were so many parts of Brisbane and the Gold Coast that lost power for a week two weeks from Christmas Eve, and that one event just ruined their whole Christmas so now that we've got these products available, and there are so many of them going in, that people don't have to people don't have to worry about it that, like all these storm warnings are being posted, get prepared. Get bags of ice, everything. If you have, if you've got a sungrow system, you can really just continue on without having to worry about that.
Focus on reliability for homes extends all the way up to grid scale systems. I also spoke with Sungrow Australia Solutions Manager, Muhammad Walid on the noisy exhibition floor at the sungrow booth. I mentioned to him that when I talk to people about batteries, a lot of times there are concerns about safety, especially fire. Walid explained to me that instead of the more common wound battery cells sundry power Titan three battery system uses a stack cell design that reduces the electrical resistance significantly, which in turn reduces the lithium plating effect. Also, each module has its own fuse and AI based monitoring that can detect and isolate a fault before it becomes a hazard. So if there is any abnormality, it can be detected up to 24 hours in advance, and that particular module can be isolated from the rest of the system to minimize the risk of any thermal runaway in the system, combined with safety mechanisms like liquid cooling and built in fire protection, this means that modules can be fitted closer together than most others, while maintaining safety. So from a single house to the whole grid, the same rule applies. Careful engineering is what keeps clean energy systems safe and reliable.
@Sungrow
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