Growatt has released its new APX HV cobalt-free LiFePO4 battery to the global market.
Integrated with soft-switching parallel connection technology, the new battery solution stores more energy by eliminating the effect of the energy mismatch between packs, allowing each module to fully charge and discharge independently. The APX also provides flexibility for installation and expansion with batteries with varied state of charge (SoC) and from different batches. It also features a redundancy design that prevents system shutdown from a defective pack.
“To ensure the ultimate safety of the APX HV battery system, we apply five levels of comprehensive protection in the product,” said Lisa Zhang, VP of marketing at Growatt. “Protections include the active Battery Management System (BMS) for each cell, the pack-level energy optimizer and built-in fire protection of aerosols for each module, an arc-fault circuit interrupter (AFCI) and a replaceable fuse for the whole system.”
The APX HV battery applies an IP66 rating of protection and smart self-heating technology to enable operation outdoors and at the lowest temperature of -10℃. The plug-and-play solution allows for efficient installation. It also eliminates the pre-charging process, reducing efforts and time needed during parallel connection and maintenance. When new battery packs are added, the APX HV system dynamically recognizes and upgrades the software automatically to the latest version for the previous batteries.
“With a maximum parallel expansion to 60 kWh of electricity by two clusters, the one-fits-all battery is compatible with our single-phase, split-phase and three-phase battery-ready inverters, including MIN 2500-6000TL-XH, MIN 3000-11400TL-XH-US, MOD 3-10KTL3-XH for residential application, as well as our MID 12-30KTL3-XH inverters for commercial application,” said Zhang.
News item from Growatt
Re: How much battery do you need?
If you’re covered by a IOU with time of day pricing & “replacement” pricing, then all you really need is enough battery to time shift one day’s excess generation from noon (lowest $) to 6-8 PM (highest $).
For people with a 5KW array that’s ~20KWh of usable battery capacity (ie. 5KW *4 hours).
What do you think?
Thomas Godshalk has raised a good question under his simple conclusion:
How much battery do you need?
A month’s worth of storage sounds like a house that’s completely off-grid with margin for being buried under snow for at least a week in the winter.
Yes, there are cloudy, rainy or snowy winter days when my array (10.4KW rated) only collects 1-2 KW, but then the weather changes & it collects 30-40KWh on a bright day. So, it still collects 650+KWh in the worst month. I haven’t tried to find the worst week, but I can count on the grid in my city.
So how long a period with bad weather, or a dead grid do you want to cover with your battery??
These batteries are way too expensive and way too small. I have a 5kw array tied to the grid. Currently my “bank” at my provider contains 650kwh of energy I’ve generated and not used. To duplicate that modest amount – 650kwh could easily be used by a small family in a month – it would cost hundreds ofmthousands of $$$$ in batteries and tangential equipment. Electricity storage is not ready for mass consumption.
But you don’t need 650 kWh at one time for one home.
In Canada?