You may be considering having solar modules installed on your rooftop to lock in energy rates and cut your carbon footprint. Further, you may already have a digital thermostat on your wall and a central heating and cooling system throughout your home. We believe the ideal situation would be to connect all of them in a cohesive network. And that’s exactly what Arise Energy is able to do for its client, via strategic partner Enphase Energy. Enphase, the leading provider of microinverters for solar systems, recently launched the “Environ” – a smart, “Solar” Thermostat”. Enphase has claimed Environ is the world’s first “solar-integrated smart energy device.”
We at Arise Energy are excited about being able to provide a solution that helps our clients track the energy output of their solar panels, while also allowing them to automatically (or manually) control their heating or air-conditioning. This solution not only allows the average owner/user to have regular everyday engagement with their solar solution, it also can help optimize how electrical energy is utilized in the home.
Enphase’s smart thermostat works by connecting to a gateway device via the “ZigBee” wireless protocol and then to the Internet and Enphase’s Enlighten website. To take full advantage of the solar tracking capabilities, we recommend that our clients with Enphase Microinverters in their system subscribe to Enphase’s Enlighten monitoring service as part of the overall solution. This allows Arise to continuously monitor the client’s solar system to determine how it’s performing over time.
Microinverters convert the direct current (DC) electricity flowing out of solar modules into the alternating current (AC) electrical power utilized by household devices and the power company’s electric grid.
If Arise clients elect to include an Environ thermostat in their system, they can then track solar system output (overall, and at the module level) as well as heating and cooling information both on the thermostat’s screen and on the Enlighten website. Another benefit of the Environ smart thermostat is that users can adjust their home temperature directly from the Web site, or even via a smart-phone application. Perhaps one of the most compelling aspects of the overall solution is that integrating the solar component into an intelligent HVAC thermostat allows users to feel confident that they’re fully leveraging additional low-cost electricity from their solar solution when electing to run their air-conditioning “full blast” on hot summer days when the solar modules are working overtime.
Enphase’s core business, and innovation, is focused on the microinverter, which handles the conversion from DC to AC at the level of each individual solar panel, rather than at a large central conversion device, such as a traditional “string inverter.” A centralized converter is vulnerable to one failure taking down the whole system, and the weakest panel in a solar array can drag down the efficiency of better-performing panels without any way for the owner or system manager to identify where the falloff in production is occurring. Eventually Enphase says it hopes to embed its microinverters directly into solar modules so that the two are sold bundled together to system designers/integrators/installers. Such integration may be years away, but in the mean time, utilizing a distributed inverter function via Enphase’s microinverters certainly delivers significant client benefits (better performance, safety, reliability and intelligent monitoring) than is possible with traditional centralized inverters.
Arise Energy believes that decentralized conversion could be “the future” of photovoltaic solar systems, and thus has already invested substantially in leveraging Enphase’s solutions in its offerings to clients. Enphase’s investors apparently think the future is bright, as back in June of 2010 the four-year-old Petaluma, Calif.-based company raised a $63 million round of funding that included VC-heavyweight Kleiner Perkins. This latest infusion of cash helped push the company’s total fundraising to over $100 million. With its continuous stream of innovations and its high quality products, Enphase has quickly become a leading partner as Arise Energy develops renewable energy solutions for its clients. For more information about Enphase and how we at Arise Energy can help you assess the solar energy potential of your building’s rooftop (or other area), please click on the contact-us link.
