There is a lot of talk about solar plus storage. Yet, it’s important to know that by adding energy storage with a DC-to-DC converter you can maximize production & profits of installed North America PV base.
Traditional storage plus solar (PV) applications have involved the coupling of independent storage and PV inverters at an AC bus, or alternatively the use of multi-input hybrid inverters. Here we will examine how a new cost-effective approach of coupling energy storage to existing PV arrays with a DC-to-DC converter can help maximize production and profits for existing and new utility-scale installations. This new approach leads to higher round trip efficiencies and lower cost of integration with exiting PV arrays, and at the same time opens up new use cases not possible with traditional AC-coupled storage.
The addition of energy storage to an existing or new utility-scale PV installation allows system owners and operators the opportunity to capture additional revenues. Six distinct solar plus storage use cases are discussed in this paper. DC-coupled storage allows project owners to access all six of these use cases, and, as compared with AC-coupling, three use cases are only available with the DC-coupled approach – clipping recapture, curtailment recapture and low voltage harvest.
To learn more about maximizing production and profits with solar plus energy storage download this guide.