Products that can aid the transition between batteries and renewable energy took the top accolades at this year’s ees Intersolar awards.
The winners of the third annual awards were announced as LG Chem and start-ups Ferroamp Elektronik and SMA Solar during the presentation at ees Intersolar Europe in Munich, Germany.
Of the winners, only Korean giant LG Chem’s lithium-ion RESU (Residential Energy Storage Unit) was a pure battery energy storage system (ESS).
Not a bad achievement as it was the firm’s first foray into the residential EES market.
The basic RESU is available from 3.3 to 10 kWh and is scalable. The panel of judges was impressed by the capacity, energy density and durability of the product.
Ferroamp’s EnergyHub system is still only sold in the firm’s native country of Sweden, but the bidirectional inverter for different PV strings, batteries and DC consumers earned the panel of judges’ favour.
The system is scalable from 3.5 kW to the MW range, and will allow future coupling to charging stations for electric vehicles.
Germany’s SMA Solar Technology won the award for its transformer-less high-voltage battery inverter Sunny Boy Storage 2.5.
The product has 2.5 kW charging and discharging power, can be retrofitted to existing PV plants and used with high-voltage batteries from a variety of manufacturers.
SMA’s product closes a gap in the inverter market and is ideal for retrofitting existing PV installations with storage devices, said the panel of judges.
The judges chose systems which feature high economic viability, had versatile possibilities for application, and which prioritised durability, efficiency and security.
The ten finalists and winners had to prove their technologies were undergoing testing or were already in use, were presented for the first time or featured significant developments to existing solutions.
