Sofar Solar Battery Storage
Low cost effective Solar Storage with Lithium Ion batteries.
After a testing period, we are now pleased to offer the SoFar Solar battery storage system, easily integrated into any grid connected solar PV system. Even though the system is using state of the art modular Pylontech Lithium Ion battery units, we are able to offer a complete installation at an incredible price.
The SoFar Solar inverter unit is installed at your premises, ideally near the fusebox, and monitors what power is coming from your Solar PV and how much power your house is exporting or drawing off the grid. From this data, it will calculate if you are exporting excess power from your PV system and store it all away in the batteries, or you may instead be drawing power from the grid (ie at night), and will supply the power you need, up to 3kw, either until the batteries have used all your stored power, or you start generating too much power from the PV again.
The principle is quite straightforward and works well, simply to try and keep your premises from drawing power off the grid as much as possible.
For Economy 7 (off peak power) electricity account owners, the Sofar also has the option to top the batteries up overnight on cheap rate electricity, which will provide you with low cost power through the day. Ideal for those low sun winter months.
SoFar have kept the controller and inverter unit simple to operate and the design philosophy straightforward, making the unit reliable and low cost to install. Saying all that, they have also incorporated a basic web portal interface you can use as a free option. You’ll need a smartphone to access it, but you’ll be able to see all the daily stats from your system, both generated PV power and stored power.
Coupled with the Sofar unit, is an ideal modular battery solution, the Pylontech Lithium Ion units. Each Module has a 2.4kwh set of cells (2.2kwh actual storage capacity), and have the wonderful advantage that enables you to build your system with more modules if you want to increase capacity. As an example, you might want to start with 2 modules, to see how your storage works out. If you realise the batteries are running low by mid evening, simply ask us to pop along and clip another one on. Easy! You don’t risk having a battery system that is too large.
Pylontech Batteries are manufactured with LIFePo4 Lithium technology, which is considered far more stable than standard Lithium as used in a Tesla or LG Chem battery.
Currently, the cost of a Pylontech 2.4kWh is £800 each. So just for the cost of a battery and a half hour engineer visit, we are able to add some more storage if you need it.
See our main BATTERY STORAGE PAGE to see a discussion outlining thoughts behind sizing your battery size.