Battery energy storage system (BESS) growth in the UK is crucial to supporting the rollout of renewable energy across the nation while overcoming challenging energy market dynamics.
That’s according to Paul Meehan, commercial sales manager at SolarEdge, during a recent Current± webinar, where he introduced the latest SolarEdge BESS, the SolarEdge CSS-OD. The battery cabinet and inverter system boasts a 102.kWh rated capacity, which can be scaled up to 1MWh+, and is rated for indoor and outdoor use.
With news of a recent fire at an under-construction BESS project in Essex still fresh in the minds of the public, Meehan is keen to emphasise the safety features of the product. “Safety and all aspects of safety are very much key to us as a company and have been a part of our drive to make the solar industry as safe as possible, and of course we extend this into the storage side of the business” Meehan noted.
Furthermore, cybersecurity “has always been a watch word” for the business, and as such several features have been built into the software management platform for the product.
Intelligent usage management through software as well as data gathering has recently become much more of a focus for BESS owners, with Pulse Clean Energy recently announcing that it had launched a new software package to collect data on the carbon savings from BESS assets and Brill Power launching the world’s first battery management as a service offering.
As such, SolarEdge has worked hard to develop an energy optimisation platform that allows users of the CSS-OD BESS units to ensure their systems are operating in the most effective way possible for both performance and profit. Meehan describes the SolarEdge ONE for C&I energy optimisation platform as “in effect the remote control that you will have on the system to allow you to make sure that the battery system is performing well and optimized”.
He added: “Once people get used to it, they can see the benefits of being able to know exactly what’s going on in their system – be it a solar system or a storage system, there is no situation where anyone would say ‘ignorance is bliss’.”
So what does the future look like for SolarEdge’s BESS technology? The first installations of SolarEdge CSS-OD units in the UK are imminent, Meehan stated, with around 20 units expected to begin installation at the end of March. Meehan expressed his excitement over the product and the future of SolarEdge. He states: “We’ve led in the industry and we continue to do so in everything that we do, because to have longevity in this business you have to show the products that you’re producing can already perform very well and are the safest they can be”.
