Congratulations, you installed a solar array at your home and the system is tied to the utility grid. If the solar doesn’t generate enough electricity, you can rely on the utility and you might even net meter power back to the provider. Sounds great, but what happens when the utility loses power?
You are out of luck. Utility distribution is susceptible year-round to storm outages, whether from snowstorms, thunderstorms or hurricanes because of the extensive network of strung wires. Ice weighs them down and downed trees yank them loose. Your solar array may be standing, but UL 1741 requires your grid-tied inverter to shut-down for safety’s sake. This prevents any power from a home from reaching the grid when repair workers are on the lines.
Here’s the beauty of a Mi-Grid energy management system: while disconnected from the grid, it operates on a stand-alone basis. Solar power can keep the lights on and that energy can also be stored to batteries within the configuration. If the batteries run low, a generator automatically kicks in to power the home and recharge the batteries, shutting down once the batteries are recharged.
Making Renewable Power Reliable
This is why the Mi-Grid can be installed as a grid-tied system or an off-grid system. It technically doesn’t need to be grid-tied. Hence, the smaller Mi-Grid sizes are ideal for remote locations as well as mobile applications, such as food trucks and RVs.
The brains of the operation can be installed in a variety of packages, including wall-mounted, indoor, outdoor or trailer mounted. The outside options are housed in NEMA 4 enclosures for durability. Mi-Grid systems range in size from 1 kW to 2 MW and can serve residences as well as businesses that want complete electric reliability.
When a Mi-Grid is connected to a distribution grid, that utility power enters the mix. The Mi-Grid is essentially a dispatch system that selects the lowest-cost available power at a given time. When grid-tied, the utility supplies power at night and can take excess power from the solar system during the day.
The batteries are kept full for backup and the generator sits in stand-by mode. This cycle runs daily, with solar power providing electricity during the day and the utility providing any needed power overnight. Mi-Grid ties together all of the energy sources, providing multi-layered power and backup.
As the consumer, you won’t see lights flickering because the shifts among power sources are seamless. For example, a customer of ours who lives in a rural area was surprised to hear at a community breakfast that everyone else lost power the day before when the local supplier dropped offline. He did not realize his inverter had kicked in under the Mi-Grid system.
Think of times when you have lost power and were out of commission when it comes to connectivity and conveniences. But it’s not just major storms that can cut into productivity and quality of life. Local power outages are fairly common events. Also, if you wish to live off-grid but not entirely replicate a previous century’s lifestyle, then Mi-Grid gives you that personal freedom. And at a lower cost than either a stand-alone solar system or a generator alone.
The other benefit to Mi-Grid is you don’t need to manually mess around with the typical emergency generator that requires frequent refilling of the fuel tank as well as oil changes. Each time you tend to such a generator, the power is turned off. Instead, the Mi-Grid generator is only turned on when the system’s batteries are low. By cycling the generator only when needed, the system saves on fuel and maintenance. And you don’t have the constant roar of many generators.
Why invest in solar alone when you can invest in a fully-integrated system to provide truly reliable power? Mi-Grid has you covered, grid-tied or off-grid, sunshine or clouds, day or night, 365 days a year.
If you are going to LIVE off-grid, or you are traveling a lot (RV & Trailer), a LiFePo4 (Lithium Iron Phosphate) is a much better battery and even at today’s prices, will be more cost effective.
But back on VRLA AGM, just before Hurricanes Marco and Imelda entered the Gulf of Mexico, one of out clients contacted us to upgrade their batteries. The UB-4D is not a great battery for standby storage. The posts are made of lead. The always seem to leak and they have high resistance in heavy draw.
The C&D TEL12-210F is an excellent upgrade. Side by side, the UB-4D has a capacity of 200AH, while the TEL12 has a capacity of 230 AH. This is a 15% increase!
My customer had a nominal 19.2 kWh of storage. But increasing the batteries from 8 to 12, and upgrading to the TEL12, they now have 33 kWh of storage. 33 kWh will run their 4 ton air conditioner about 15 hours. They have 17 kW of solar, so they produce about 100 kWh during the day. They should have enough power to run everything when the power fails, day or night.
