News

Sustainable Energy Begins Production of Smart-Grid Energy Storage Inverters

February 11, 2013 by Jeff Shepard

Sustainable Energy Technologies Ltd. announced today that it has shipped its first energy storage inverters to prospective channel partners in Germany and the United States. The inverters will demonstrate the value of the company's technology in enabling the integration of high-efficiency battery technologies in smart-grid and micro-grid applications.

Michael Carten, CEO of Sustainable Energy commented: "The residential solar energy storage market is about to take off in Germany. Smart inverters which enable the direct connection of new low voltage batteries to the power grid are a critical component to all energy management systems. The very few German solutions in the market are complex and expensive. We are experiencing across the board interest in our bi-directional energy storage inverter in Germany, which works with all the new battery technologies, for its efficiency and smart grid functionality but especially for its ability to reduce the cost and complexity of the energy management systems.

"In the US, we are seeing interest in the platform for diesel based micro-grids for our cost and efficiency advantages. Significantly, we are one of only two companies in the world which have grid-interactive energy storage inverters that are certified for both European and North American markets. By the end of this Quarter, we expect to have certification in Japan, enabling OEM partners to develop global applications with the same electronics platform, Carten concluded"

Sustainable Energy's bi-directional energy storage inverter has the highest round trip (battery charging and discharging) efficiencies for grid-interactive energy storage inverters in the power industry. The software configurable platform has an open communications protocol which enables full utility control over the battery charging and discharging functions. The inverter has been designed from the bottom up to be easily integrated into power management systems allowing OEM partners to quickly develop lower cost products for multiple markets around the same electronics platform.

In European smart-grid applications, the Company's energy storage inverter manages the integration of batteries and solar power with the power grid to optimize the use of lower cost solar electricity typically as part of home energy management systems. In Germany, demand is being driven by consumer demand to de-couple from rising electricity prices and capture the value of the spread between solar and grid electricity prices.

Micro-grids are small islands of power serving multiple loads which are typically disconnected from the utility grid in remote community, industrial or military settings, but in some markets such as Japan are integrated with the grid and operate to maintain pockets of higher power quality within the utility grid. Energy storage is typically used on micro-grids in combination with diesels to provide firm high quality power and optimize diesel operating efficiencies. With rapidly falling solar electricity cost, solar energy is also being used to reduce diesel fuel consumption which continues to rise with rising oil prices.