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The Enphase AC Battery - Now Available In New Zealand

By Kristy Hoare on in Battery Storage For Solar

The Enphase AC Battery - Now Available In New Zealand

The widely anticipated Enphase AC Battery is now available in New Zealand! 

Over the next 12 months Enphase will be distributing 70,000 battery units in New Zealand and Australia.

The Enphase AC Battery is a small, modular battery in comparison to other units on the market, and it is set at an affordable price. You can start by installing one unit and adding more units as you go, or if you are unsure of how many/the size of battery storage you may need, you can cautiously add more as you go. 

The battery units are rated at 1.2kWh, with 1.18kWh being usable. They allows 95% depth of discharge. They weigh in at 25kg each and are expected to be mounted in appropriate areas of the home, such as a garage wall.  More specs here.

AC Battery Garage

As a plug and play battery unit, it makes for ease of use, Enphase are gaining a reputation for making their products user friendly, as their micro-inverters also simplify the process of installation.

Most importantly, they work easily with solar power systems that have micro-inverters.  All batteries require stored power to be in the form of DC energy.  But the power coming from solar panels with micro-inverters is AC.  So, as well as storing your power, these little units will convert your AC solar power to DC to store the energy, and then convert the power back to AC when you are drawing power from the battery, following? Phew. 

The idea of having battery storage at home combined with solar panels on your roof is that you can store the power you produce from the solar panels during the day.  Then at night, when your power consumption is high (using cooking appliances, lighting, digital devices and heating), you can instead draw from your reserved solar power instead of using power from the grid.

For this system to work efficiently you will need the Enphase S-Metered Envoy, the brains behind the system. It monitors your power consumption and solar power generation, and it informs the systems on if/when solar power should go straight to appliances, or to go to the battery, or simply be sent to the grid. 

You can also start by installing the Enphase S-Metered which will give the you the data to help determine the optimal battery system size you will need in your home.  Enphase is definitely making it easy to join the solar storage revolution.

4 AC Batteries installed in Australia 

 

 


Showing 9 comments

Posted by Ric on 6th Jun 2019 14:31:42

I have a 2.9 kW enphase battery ready solar array on grid with genesis. I have a 2 phase power supply. One my frustrations is the solar panels only supply one phase even when the solar output exceeds the demand on both phases. Could I install an enphase battery which will supply both phases before drawing any electricity from the grid?

Posted by Kristy on 22nd May 2018 10:30:08

Hi Will,
Sorry for the slow reply. Yes, it can store off-peak grid storage.

A customer quote on the Enphase website explains:
"Another great feature of MyEnlighten is that it also allows us to schedule a 'top-up' of the Enphase batteries overnight with off-peak power from the grid if necessary to avoid using peak rate power in the morning."
https://go.enphase.com/au/homeowner-stories-2018

Posted by Will on 11th May 2018 08:32:29

Could an Enphase AC Battery be installed in a house with no panels? Low tarrif night rate power could be used to charge the battery at night then used during the morning and evening when spot rate goes high. This could work with Flick Electric spot rate pricing. Seems to me it's only a software restricition.

Posted by Ken on 5th May 2018 10:15:05

What is the current price of Enphase batteries each?

Posted by Frits on 3rd Dec 2017 21:59:22

I have a 12 panel system and export about half of the generated energy which is about 200kW p/m.
Getting only 8cts p/kW and paying 40cts p/kW for import after dark is not a very good deal.
So I did the sums to see if the Enphase AC battery would be a viable option. I have an Enphase micro inverter system.
The answer is a resounding NO. They are far to expensive retailing at more than $2500.
Interestingly Enphase did set a price/kWh for them (US$838) and converted to $NZ that would be about $1215 per unit.
In my calculation I would save $2336 per unit over 10 years.
If the units where sold at the Enphase advised price I would have installed 4 of them tomorrow.

Posted by Kristy on 17th Mar 2017 08:40:37

Hi Peter

As of March 2017, one AC battery until costs around $2,500.

Posted by Chris on 13th Feb 2017 10:25:32

Hi Paul, the batteries do require an Envoy S metered. It needs to have the metering capability so that it knows the demand in the home and can tell the battery how to respond. How many you will need will really depend on your situation. A good idea would be to have the Envoy S metered installed before the battery. This will give you an idea of the demand you have in your home and the excess daytime PV generation. As a general rule, you will want to undersize the number of batteries so that you charge them fully every day. You don't want the batteries not getting fully charged or else you aren't getting full value from the asset. You'd still be exporting to the grid when the batteries are fully charged and there is no demand in your home. You'll need to speak to your installer about costs.

Posted by Paul on 11th Feb 2017 08:27:00

We had an Enphase system installed supposedly battery-ready, but I gather we would now have to have an Enphase S-Metered Envoy installed as well as one or more batteries. But how much is it for an Enphase S-Metered Envoy? And how much for each battery? How many batteries would we need for a small house? And can we still export extra power back to the grid? Cheers

Posted by Peter on 22nd Sep 2016 04:45:46

What kind of cost can I expect?

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