Running on the Sun - Personal Technology Is Now Powered by Clean Energy 24/7

We’ve recently completed a big project in our Alhambra office that we are very excited about!  With the addition of rooftop solar and a microgrid from Sonnen, we are now a net energy exporter and can run off-grid indefinitely. As an energy storage consultant that provides services to Pasadena, CA, and surrounding areas in the San Gabriel Valley, we’ll share how we did it below. 

Power from the Sun, Storage from Sonnen

We all need power to run our homes and offices, and most of us get this from a power utility. While many homes in the Pasadena area have rooftop solar generation, this typically doesn’t cover the home’s total energy usage, and it can’t be used at night. With a storage system from Sonnen, our offices can now store excess energy produced by solar during the day, and discharge to power the building at night. This is possible whether or not the grid is connected due to the advanced microgrid technology in the Sonnen EcoLinx.

With the ability to generate power 24 hours a day in a closed-loop system, power interruptions and high utility bills are things of the past.  At the same time, we are no longer contributing to the high demand on extremely hot summer days that cause Flex Alerts. All of the power used to run our office is also renewable and carbon-free, unlike power from a generator. And when the batteries eventually need to be replaced in about 15 to 20 years, they are fully recyclable.

Savant Energy Provides Ultimate Flexibility

The ability to generate and store energy is a great start, but a home or office like ours often has more appliances than can be run on batteries at once. With our Savant Energy system, we can automatically control the total amount of energy usage so that we never exceed the maximum amount available when operating off-grid. We can also choose to shed certain loads to make sure we don’t run out of energy on a cloudy day in winter. In the summer we generate far more energy than we need and can choose to feed it back to the grid in normal operation or automatically shut off excess solar production when off-grid. With a tap on a smartphone, we can power any appliance we need. 

We sized our equipment to meet our office’s needs and we were able to take the entire building off grid. Depending on the size of your Pasadena-area home, you may wish to use an energy storage system to power only certain parts of the house or certain types of loads, like lights. You may simply want to time-shift your energy usage to a less costly time of day and reduce peak demand.  Whether or not you have solar generation, a Sonnen EcoLinx and Savant Energy system can help you increase your independence and provide clean, reliable power during a utility failure.

We have deployed this energy management system  to operate sustainably and uninterrupted, no matter what is happening in the world around us. If freeing yourself from the power company you currently depend on is one of your goals, give us a call at 323.250.3430.