Battery System Design

• Navigating to the Solar & Battery designer page
• Battery Discharge Mode
• Battery Settings
• Charge battery from grid and export battery to grid.
• Adding batteries to existing solar power systems

Navigating to the Solar & Battery designer page

From the Design page, click on the sub-menu icon in the Design tab.

Battery Discharge Mode

You can model when the battery will discharge to reflect the programming of the battery inverter.

Self-Consumption

• This is the default, and most common scenario

• The battery will discharge whenever there is a load and not enough solar to run it. Discharge will occur at any time, regardless of peak/off-peak periods, to maximise self-consumption and minimise use of grid energy.

• This will result in the maximum charge-discharge cycling of the battery

Only in Peak

• The battery will discharge during Peak times only, to maximise return on investment for customers on a time of use tariff.

• Peak times are defined by the tariff periods on the Energy page.

All except off-peak

• The battery will discharge during Peak and Shoulder times only.

• Peak and Shoulder times are defined by the tariff periods on the Energy page.

Backup Only

• The battery will be kept fully charged, and only discharge when there is a grid outage.

• Modelling is based on the  'Grid availability' factor in the De-rating section, where you can specify the percentage of time the grid is available

Battery Settings

• Battery Nominal Capacity. This is the battery module nominal capacity x battery quantity. It doesn’t take into account the Depth of Discharge that you set.

• Quantity - the number of battery units connected in total. This value is pre-set to match the battery inverter’s maximum voltage, but can be reduced.

• Depth of Discharge - This is the % of battery capacity that will be used. This defaults to the maximum DoD defined in the battery data sheet, but can be adjusted according to how you intend to program the inverter.

• Warranty Lifetime – you can specify the number of years that the battery system will be covered under warranty from the manufacturer. This value must be based on the warranty information provided in the data specification sheet from the supplier/manufacturer.

• Warranty Cycle life - Warrantied cycle life can be provided for batteries where the warranty is provided for a particular cycle life limit eg. 4000 cycles

• Peak Shaving Threshold. Use this only if the battery inverter will be programmed for Peak Shaving / Reduction to reduce peak demand tariff charges. This is the peak load (consumption) power level at which battery discharge will begin. That is, the battery will not discharge until that power level is reached.

• Prioritise Charge Over Loads - prioritises using solar energy to charge the battery over supplying the load, up until the State of Charge level specified. If left at 0/unset, loads are always prioritised before any remainder is directed to battery charging.

To view the effects of these control set points on the system modelling:

1. go to the Reports > Design Review

2. scroll down to the Average Daily Performance chart

3. select the ‘Week’ view, choose a month and click Generate Chart

4. click on State of charge in the legend

Charge battery from grid and export battery to grid.

See Battery Grid Charge & Export

Adding batteries to existing solar power systems

See Upgrades / adding to existing systems