Secure Power Supply finds a home among extreme Oklahoma weather

Oklahoma residents are no strangers to booming summer thunderstorms, hail and the unfortunate tornado roaring through their state. With such storm potential and the history of grid outages they’ve caused, solar-curious customers are increasingly interested in backup power.

Given the high cost of entry into the world of grid-tied battery backup systems, Ion Solar of Tulsa, OK, saw an opportunity for their customers to experience backup power through the Secure Power Supply (SPS) feature of the Sunny Boy TL-US inverter.

Opportunity power comes knocking

Since the homeowner’s roof wasn’t large enough or ideally oriented, the Ion Solar team designed a robust, ground-mount system to withstand high winds with an optimal orientation. The 9.5 kW system is creating power from 36 SolarWorld 270-watt monocrystalline modules, fed into a Sunny Boy 6000TL-US and 3000TL-US, each with SPS functionality at the ready.

“With our extreme weather, our customers saw the value of SPS,” said Seth Christ of Ion Solar. “The system is designed such that if they need more backup capabilities down the road, we can add a Sunny Island and a battery bank when the time comes. That’s a great future opportunity to work with existing customers.”

More than enough power

At the homeowner’s current rate of consumption, the system will provide 130 percent of their demands. Extra power sold back to the local utility will help speed up the payback period for the system and allow for future demand growth, should the need arise.

In addition to a desire to be energy-neutral for financial savings, the homeowner felt a strong desire to install solar to be more socially and environmentally responsible. Thanks to decreasing solar energy costs, people are able to have their solar and keep more of their money, too.