As more technologies become viable and accepted into the residential environment, a key capability will be in tying together all aspects of the smart home: from charging electric vehicles with solar panels, to using energy storage for efficient load management.
Sonnen’s announcement yesterday, of its “all-in-one ecoLinx smart energy management system” is an attempt to develop a unified theory of home energy management.
Blake Richetta, Sonnen’s senior vice president, believes “the energy industry has been tinkering around with quasi home automation and ‘smart home’ products that cannot truly provide the performance required of a grid level solution,” he said in a statement.
Sonnen’s new offering is an all-in-one system that can be scaled from 10 kWh to 20 kWh of storage capacity, and includes smart circuit breakers with cloud-based connectivity, which the company says will provide “efficient load-monitoring and remote communication.”
Sonnen has made multiple announcements in the residential space and earlier this year scored a $70 million commitment from Shell Ventures towards its international expansion.
Sonnen has been working to develop virtual power plant communities and in 2016 launched the first sonnenCommunity. Homes are capable of communicating and sharing electricity, and the entire system can function as a virtual power plant capable of interacting with the wider electric grid.
Last year the company introduced the strategy in Australia and in the first U.S.-based sonnenCommunity in Arizona. The master planned community of “Jasper,” in Prescott Valley, Ariz., will utilize 23 MWh of energy storage capacity paired with rooftop solar systems and include 11.6 MW of power input-output potential.
Avots: smartcitiesdive
