Mark, one of our customers in Victoria has been kind enough to provide his testimonial of the Zenaji Aeon Battery system coupled with Selectronic inverters he had installed earlier this year. His full testimonial is below, have a read. Thanks Mark and glad to hear the system’s working well!
Mark Woods Zenaji Aeon Battery Testimonial 2020
We had been considering a home solar system for quite some time, but our site had its challenges. We had shading issues, frequent patchy cloud resulting in sun bursts. Used most of our power at night, required two phase support and whole house backup. Instead of waiting for the right products to release on the market. Unfortunately, we had to wait years for the right products.
Our main requirements for the system consisted of:
– No break in switchover to backup.
– Handle variable shading across panel arrays.
– Rapid charge capability (< 2 hrs from flat)
– Single battery supporting the two power phases.
– Managed AC coupling of solar PV inverter to battery inverter.
In addition to our system requirements we also had specific requirements for our home energy storage system as follows:
– High surge capacity, high roundtrip efficiency and long life over a wide ambient temperature range.
– 100% discharge without loss of cycles.
– Scalable and compact.
– Compatible with Selectronic SP PRO inverters.
– Cost effective – it had to be affordable and offer value for money.
– High surge capacity, high roundtrip efficiency and long life over a wide ambient temperature range.
– 100% discharge without loss of cycles.
– Scalable and compact.
– Compatible with Selectronic SP PRO inverters.
– Cost effective – it had to be affordable and offer value for money.
The problem
Obviously, the battery of any energy storage capable solar PV system is critical, and we looked at many systems! Even in 2019, no battery that was commercially available in Australia for domestic installations ticked all our requirements. This includes the big name manufactures that provide products with significant market acceptance. Now given our shortened charge period, Lithium batteries seemed the only viable option. However, most Lithium batteries on the market are using the LiFePO4, NMC chemistries or variations of some kind and these chemistries struggled to meet our requirements. Furthermore, after reading specification and warranty documents for several battery products it was clear to us that these products were simply not suitable (indeed capable) for our requirements long term.
Fortunately, late in 2019 a new battery came on the market that ticked most of our requirements. It was the Aeon battery from Zenaji. It used a Lithium chemistry that we were particularly interested in – Lithium Titanate Oxide. The LTO cells are noted for there extreme charge and discharge ratios as well as extremely high cycle life – Look at the A48-40-02 specifications on the Zenaji web site for the full story.
Flexibility of the Aeon battery is one of its standout features. The Aeon battery allowed a two-stage approach to our system. As we have a two-phase grid connection, we required one phase per stage of the installation. Our Aeon battery array (7 Aeon batteries providing 13.4 kWh) effortlessly supports both phases with sustained charging of 11 kW and discharging of 14 kW (30 mins) or even 24 kW (30s). Those limits are not due to the battery they are the limits of the battery inverters! A couple of big named batteries will impose a 5 kW limit on both charging and discharging which was a deal breaker for us. In addition, with sufficient solar irradiation, the Aeon battery allowed us to realise our goal of a full charge from near flat in less than two hours.
Overall
Of course, no battery is perfect, and the Aeon battery does not have the high energy density of named brands using other Lithium chemistries but for us it was not really an issue. Furthermore, given the useable (warrantied) power per cycle. The Aeon compares well with many batteries when battery space to useable capacity ratio is considered.
We have only had the system fully installed for just under 3 months. As the battery has had 2MWh DC in and about 2MWh DC out which is an amazingly high efficiency. Note, the actual system efficiency is lower due to the power draw of inverters and AC-DC-AC conversion losses.
It can feel like a gamble with a new product but that certainly has not been our experience with both the Aeon battery and service from Zenaji and based on our testimonial. We rate them very highly!”
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