Solar Spotlight: Back Off Gas-Powered Generators, A New Backup is in the House!

A New Jersey family will no longer need gas-powered generators during outages. The installation of SMA’s Sunny Boy Storage with Automatic Backup Unit in their residence will provide them with backup power – and peace of mind – during emergencies.

Financial and environmental reasons moved the Ratliff family to add storage to the solar system at their home. They wanted to be able to maximize self-consumption to take advantage of lower rates with time-of-use billing and avoid the use of dirtier gas-powered generators.

Exact Solar, the installer to whom the family entrusted this project, analyzed its client’s needs and options available to come up with a recommendation of connecting three LG Chem batteries to an SMA Sunny Boy Storage battery inverter with an Automatic Backup Unit.

This fully integrated solution for whole home backup power from SMA offers an AC coupled architecture, which provides opportunities for new PV or retrofit installations, and allows up to three high-voltage batteries connected in parallel to the battery inverter. It also has a 200 Amp rated bus for direct line-side connection to large home electrical panels. In addition, it balances up to five kVA of imbalance across phases, reducing the potential for system interruption during backup mode operation due to imbalanced loads within the home.

“We chose the SMA Sunny Boy Storage because it was the system that was able to give the customer the functionality he was looking for at a reasonable price. The Sunny Boy Storage inverter was able to be connected to three of the LG Chem batteries, which is the amount of energy storage we needed, and the ABU gave the controls necessary to maximize self-consumption for all of the customer’s loads and not be limited to just a critical loads subpanel. As more utilities go to time of use pricing or limit export, I think we will see more and more storage systems being implemented,” said Exact Solar Founder and President Mark Bortman.

The 20.13kW system was commissioned in February 2019.