We are seeing an uptick in consumers looking for whole home battery backup systems without solar panels for shorter grid outages. They either want battery only or battery with generator charging capability, either portable or fixed.
I was planning on offering primarily Sol-Ark 15k for this scenario. But I have had mixed results in getting any appreciable battery charging from generators. I had a 48kW recently barely able to provide 3kW within the Sol-Ark's parameters, and a 22kW that can charge at 18kW without breaking a sweat. Portable generators are all over the map, too. I've used a Honda 2200 inverter generator to charge at 1,500W, a piece of junk 8kW cage rattler that was happy charging at 8kW, and a 5kW that didn't like giving up even 500W. Is there any rhyme or reason to what generators are best or why this happens? Sometimes I'm faced with clients that have existing generators and I have to tell them that I can't promise how well it will work. That's not a great sales pitch. Yes, I have adjusted the volt/freq windows and set the Sol-Ark to General Standard. I have tried peak shaving with no real positive results for the generators that performed poorly. Also, if Sol-Ark isn't the best answer, I'm open to alternatives. I also considered installing these systems with separate 48V chargers connected to the generator output, but I'm not sure how much better that will be and if there are adjustable chargers I can use on a range of generator outputs. Any advice would be appreciated, and I would also like to know if others are seeing this trend for whole home UPS. It could just be hurricane related here, of course. Jason Szumlanski Florida Solar Design Group
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