If you hadn't made this video I'd have never have known this was in Grimsby, great for the area, this part of England really needs these types of jobs.
The cells themselves cost around €100-150 per kWh. Most cheap batteries (without Inverter) are available at around €350 per kWh. So let's see what this one will cost
@@djrrmml7514 I was basing my numbers on Pylontech (well established brand) and Jakiper (sub-brand of Orient Power), plus giving them some added margin. Importantly, acknowledging your assertion, batteries are utterly commodity, if they can't reach that price, it'll be selling on hype and not value.
Got a Zappi and Eddi being installed soon - in no small part thanks to Fully Charged’s coverage. It’s great to support a young British company with big ideas.
Unfortunately in this country it is why sell it at a decent price when you can sell it at a really high price and make a killing off the first sale and then the company goes under and a good idea gone.
Would really appreciate a video on comparing inverters and battery options for various size solar arrays. It's a mine field out there with so many options it's hard to know what to choose
The difficulty is that it's not just down to the PV array size. If you have a 4kW array, but have a high base load in your house, there is no need for a battery. If you have a very low base load during daylight hours, but higher in the evening, then a 15kw battery is probably useful. What we have seen in practice is that most people would be OK with around 5-7kwh of storage. However having an expandable system is a benefit as you can add depending on what you need. Looks like the my energi can do this, but similarly options like BYD hvs / hvm can expand depending on your requirements.
Hi have enphase micro inverters i7 on my 16 solar panels which helps if shading occurs on the panels, this goes to a Lux inverter in the garage, then have 5 pylontech batteries that it charges. The batteries used because same amount of a powerwall but half the price. Hope that helps
This is a rebranding of the Kstar Blue-s series battery with inverter series. With better software to fit into the ecosystem. But probably also at a higher price.
Why why why wasn't there a discussion about bi-directional charging from the EV back into the home ecosystem? Vehicle-to-load is an important technology and it's disappointing for it not to get an airing here - a real missed opportunity.
The technology exists but here in the UK we seem to have been forgotten about - the early Nissan Leafs were shown plugged in to them and were reported to have kept the electricity going into home during an earthquake in Japan. I think we need these asap, and with talks of blackouts this winter and the high cost of electricity, they would be a huge benefit to the country. On top of that, they'd be a lot cheaper than a battery and better for the environment as no new battery materials would need to be sourced.
The international standard for vehicle to grid power management haven’t been fully finalised. Once they are more grid operators will be able to look at deploying. Many car manufacturers may then over the air update their cars. Should add a lot of car manufacturers are less keen because it will shorten the effective life of the car battery.
I want this! Got a Tesla & a massive commercial solar system at work. I’d love to come home & plug the car to the house to run it overnight. I know in the US the Ford F150 has a whole system for vehicle to house power! It would be a massive benefit then wouldn’t need a home battery!
I have a 5.5kW solar PV system and a Tesla Powerwall battery. In my opinion, you need at least 10kWh battery storage capacity to make powering the house almost all year round viable. I get about 93% annual self sufficiency, with a further 2200kWh going to the grid (which I earn around £700 for on the Octopus Agile Outgoing tarrif). I also heat my domestic hot water for 8 months of the year by turning off the HW side of my gas boiler. The ideal would be an electric car with V2P, to be charged on the surplus solar PV energy. Don'y forget, even the best EV's only manage abour 4 miles per kWh, so a 5 kWh storage battery would power the car for 20 miles tops! Charging a car using a cheap overnight tarrif or during the day using spare solar energy makes the most sense. Designing software to make the 3 power sources (solar PV, storage battery, EV battery) talk to eack other is a big step forward.
Recently, I had both a Zappi and Harvi installed, and I can honestly say they allow me to do everything I'd dreamt of being able to do (e.g. charge my car completely of solar if I want to), and more besides. Great to see the company and people behind such a well-designed and easy-to-use product. Can't wait to see if/when the Libbi comes to Australia - will definitely consider getting it if so.
@@rogerphelps9939 I live in West Australia with a 5KWH array on my roof now. I can honestly say with an average of 8 hour a day of sunshine that I've seen a company actively marketing this type of power management for my home in West Aust. It's a shame, because in my diesel powered Off Grid camper RV I have a solution by Redarc that allow me to camp with ease using self powered electricity.
I have a Zappi and it’s great for charging off my excess solar in the UK. We get paid such a poor amount for what we send back to the grid that you want to make use of it yourself. Zappi allow me to do that
I'm an engineer and I'm really impressed by the MyEnergi products. I'm yet to use them but will be putting them in our new home. I particularly liked the fact that the Zappi charger monitors your grid connection (amps on each phase) and will reduce the car charging to ensure that your grid connection supply rating is not exceeded. Also, fully integrated 'out of the box' saves soo much hassle (and potential disappointment). when trying to integrate products from different manufacturers.
After all the teasers about a new product from My Energi it’s great to see it. Looking forward to hearing about an operational virtual power plant based on thousands of them.
Absolutely brilliant what they, MyEnergi, are doing. I have my name down for a 10kw battery and know I can do my part to help me, the grid and the environment.
@@MrPhlipflop It's important that the various companies try to avoid proprietary systems. Just as no one renewable energy producer is going to be the answer, storage systems will be diverse too.
If I get a battery this is the one I will get. Will perfectly integrate with my existing MyEnergi system. Just a pity the installers in Germany are so lacking.
5:30-5:34 time stamp TOO FUNNY!!! So good given the serious nature of energy requirement that humor is not lost along the way. Loved your performance on Red Dwarf! Best wishes!
absolutely delighted to see that there is now a form of home management system. it's a really important next step and with the integrated home batteries, finally a complete system is available. very very cool
Love it! It's so good to see a UK company making a real difference in green energy space. Thank you Fully Charged for bringing this to the mainstream. I'm looking at a sola, battery, car charging system and this fits the bill. I'm also a dwafa, love ya Kryten!
@@jimmyhackers8980 They showed they had solar, at least it is in the app demo, so maybe it’s their own energy and they should be able to choose what they want to do with it. Also an LED is very low in energy.
I have been operating as a microgrid for past 4 years with my 13.2 kWh solar PV system coupled by my two Powerwalls (27 kWh) for ~ 9 months of the year and only draw grid energy from November through early February. We generally export about 50% of our excess solar energy back to grid and live in Edmonds, WA in USA.
@@Dave5843-d9m Call me mr picky, I still like to see numbers. Heat pumps are supposed to be the new nirvana for home heating until you look at capital outlay and pay back times. £10000 for external wall insulation, £15000 for heat pump and fitting minus £5000 grant still makes £20000 outlay with payback time even at todays prices of over 20 years. So forgive me, I love these ideas and I genuinely do see their merit but I need numbers
Wonderful to see this technology implemented so intelligently. If the price compares favorable to more broadly available technologies, one can only hope it becomes commonplace.
It looks like a rebranded KStar battery system (CATL cells), with the additional integration module for the myenergi app and comms side. The app and control ecosystem is really slick and just makes it all work well together. As a new build or new system with PV being installed, the hybrid inverter is a really good offer. But this can also be retrofit as an AC coupled system too for existing PV installations.
You are so right it's dose look like a kstar but I can see why they would do this. Why develop something from scratch with teething pains when you can build on an already developed products but to make it better advanced features.
@@johanncover1988 I agree! And it's not a cut and paste, the interface and controls they have developed to make it work in their ecosystem so smoothly is added value over the original system.
@@ChrisBaileyMusic I have a similar setup with and emporia EV changer and a solarac equivalent inverter and it took some research/engineering to get it all to work together. While it works "okay" I have to jump between apps to modification as to wear I want power to go and it is very easy to make a mistake. I can definitely appreciate a fully integrated systems from "myenergy" like that.
I have all their previous products and they play well together. But when reviewing home batteries two (related) questions come to mind, when there's a grid outage: (a) can Libbi continue to power the house, and (b) does solar PV continue to charge the battery? In other words where is MyEnergi's equivalant to the Tesla Backup Gateway? Also, when is Zappi going to enable V2G for CSS charging? Great video, glad to see MyEnergy still inovating.
Seconded, this along with the Tesla Energy Plan is the killer question for me for every alternative to the Tesla Powerwall and Backup Gateway. Can they do full house backup (Island mode) in the event of a grid outage and can they do net-metered, price matched import and export so I'm not getting ripped off in the event that I do export excess solar to the grid? Everything I'm seeing so far is not giving me a warm and fuzzy feeling.
@@BikerDinger I agree, if I can ask a question please, are you on the Tesla Energy Plan and if so how do you get on with it? We export about 1 MW a year of our total production of 4100. We are on Octopus Go Faster, have an electric car and are looking again at the TEP as Go has now risen to 12p per kw off peak and the 5 hour slots are no more, just 4 hours. The Octopus Intelligent plan isn’t available to us as our car and Zappi charger aren’t compatible yet. The TEP appears on the surface to take away any restrictions on charging the car for example ie same cost in and out but working out the economic side of it is difficult because we can’t find any real world examples of anyone using it.
@@lynnfisher4396 Good evening Lynn, Not yet. I only moved into my current place six months ago. The previous owner installed the panels back before batteries were really a thing. Unfortunately, since I settling in and starting looking every installer I've spoken to is telling me it's anything up to a year's lead time on Powerwalls at present. Even with that wait time and the cost it's the best option for me. Full house backup while maintaining my generation and price matched import/export is the full package and to my knowledge noone else can match it at this time. Shame really as the overall MyEnergi range is, to my mind at least, the better option in terms of an integrated solution, mainly because that's what it's designed for. One can only hope future development of the Libbi both in terms of the tech and energy company tariffs can take it the rest of the way.
@@BikerDinger Thanks, it’s worth the wait. Our PW and Gateway has worked flawlessly since it was installed in October 2020. We have had several power cuts and we weren’t even aware of them until we happened to check the app. The 5 kw peak output is so useful. The only real downside is the way the software “ guesses” how much it should refill the battery from the cheap rate electricity in Time Based Control. It normally gets it right but occasionally it hasn’t put anything into the battery and we have had a dull day and nearly run out of electricity in the battery. There are ways to force charge but it’s not as simple or precise as other battery systems allow.
Happy to see that the obvious solution to energy issues is available. Available, when, at what price? Software controlled integration of altenative sources has been the obvious solution for years - since power companies started using computers to control generation and distribution. Baffled why it took so long to create adaptive domestic solutions - maybe wee needed the energy crisis to kick start the manufacturing process.
To be honest, this looks like a polished kickstarter presentation. A whole lot of information, without providing a whole lot of information. When investigating installing an EV charger, it suddenly went from an EV charger through to adding on A. B. C. D etc, and it seems it will be the same with this.
Nice. But missing a key piece of data (well, a few really: price, and then availability, and then Invertor throughput (charging and discharging, and finally, will it be able to deliver grid failure backup...
Yes! I would even be happy with V2H Another feature I would like is if it could also operate like a gateway to allow your solar to continue to operate during an outage
One problem with vehicle to grid: it's kind of hard for a car to soak up extra solar energy during the day for people who need the car to drive the work...you'd essentially have to either work from home, own multiple cars, or get to work by walk, bike, or public transit, in order to get the most use out of it.
@@ab-tf5fl I am retired but lucky enough to have a PV system and 2 Teslas that sit in the garage most of the day. Ideal use case for us would be V2G from Tesla...Apparently it was a feature of the Roadster but was little used - so Elon Musk, being data driven, thinks there is no demand for V2G...
Totally agree about distributed grid battery - however, I see a danger that all these internet-connected units will be an obvious target for sabotage and hacking from foreign powers. If you fail to deal critically with this issue, then the system will be very vulnerable to this kind of attack.
@@thrustsst There is no real way to abuse those batteries to hurt the grid. If too many are told to deliver power to the grid, the grid frequency would go up, above 50 Hz, and the batteries would stop delivering power. They would have to hack every battery inverter model and circumvent this protection first.
@@Psi-Storm that's not beyond hackers. Don't forget quite a few years ago they hacked tens of millions of security cameras & networked them to take down Twitter. If you find a way into one device you've found a way into all of them.
@@Psi-Storm if too many just charge the grid you're right, the frequency will drift & they'll trip off but if all of them cycle power at half-second intervals, synchronized, they're likely to cause surges big enough to trip out a substation or 2 & given how flaky USA's power grid has proved to be over the years that might take everything down -- nationwide blackout, possibly with contagion into Canada & Mexico, & taking days to re-start the network. *_Never_* discount the amount of trouble bad actors can cause because they think it's funny or to make money or to achieve a political outcome.
Interesting video. We have been investigating battery options for the past 6 months or so and have found the journey a real challenge. We have a 4kw solar array (4yrs old and facing south / south west) and are in the south east. We have discovered like so many that you only get a token pay back from the FIT tariff. Having seen our stats for a full year 2021, it is interesting to see what days of the year would be useful to charge a battery pack. We discovered that roughly speaking three months of the year we would struggle to rely on batter power due to poor weather conditions but the rest of the year we could potentially use 100%. The solution seems to be, as you pointed out, an option for cheaper over night electricity tariff to get the 100% use of solar for 12 months. Tried to find the battery tech specs on the myenergy site but not found them yet although I am sure they are there somewhere. The 10 year warranty seems to be a standard and a good timeline to gauge investment value for those that want to. Generally speaking the battery contents seem to be Lithium Ion Phosphate and these are currently the most reliable. I am curious with your video test setup there was 3.6kWh left in the battery but didn't see the charge level and requirement from the car battery. Would it be most effective for the car to charge overnight on cheap rate electricity in order to use the battery for house use?
The best discharge plan is depending on your energy prices. If you have a peak rate in the evening, then yes it would be optimal to keep enough energy in the battery to cover your house electricity until it switches to off peak and then charge the rest of the car with off peak electricity. On the other hand battery storage systems are currently still so expensive that most will die before you got your money back in energy savings.
@@Psi-Storm you might want to recheck your maths now that electricity prices have shot up, what was a 20-year payback is now less than 5 years in many instances.
@@alanhat5252 What voodoo magic are you applying to get to 5 years? A well balanced pv battery system gets 250 full cycles a year. Even if we assume you would save 30 cents a kwh, a 10kwh battery system has to cost only 3750€ to break even in 5 years. At the moment you pay at least 7k for the battery, 1500 for the inverter and another 1000 for the smart meter and installation cost. In reality you have to also add the storage loss and the income loss from no longer providing the pv electricity to the grid. I currently pay 25 cents for electricity in Germany, while i get 8 cents for pv grid feeding. So in reality i save less than 20 cents from self storage.
...everything about this video is AWESOME! (am particularly proud to be able to say these products are designed and manufactured here in the UK. Go GB - we can do it!) Love you Britain xxx
This is really intersting . I would say that 5kw is NOT actually that much power. Especially if you have an electric oven . Youd really need atleast 3 of these units stacked together which begs the question how much are they ?
I was thinking the same thing, already have a 12kWh battery but it's not enough to get through night-time and then a cloudy day, upgrading to 20kWh is my next move. People often make the mistake of having a too small battery with their solar installation - especially if they intend to stop using gas.
I like their point on it working together. I have small solar and never really had enough ‘spare’ for days when the clouds came over (the zappi needs a minimum of 1.4kw to charge a car so anything below that it’d start/stop and thats not good for the car). With a battery it can buffer to smooth out those interruptions so it can make EV charging practical on solar even with a fairly small array
@@edc1569 I don’t think it damages them, but if they start/stop/start/stop often they’ll often refuse to take a charge until you disconnect and reconnect again. So if your solar excess isn’t safely above the minimum it can be hard to use (but battery solves that)
@@davidhumphries3614 Given what the UK weather is like the Zappi ought to be able to work down to just a few hundred watts. It does not, so, if the constraint is not on the car side, the design of Zappi is not fit for purpose.
This is all excellent work from companies such as my energy. The challenge is this, how much for the entire system? Solar panels, car charger, inverter and batteries.........15k - 20k. How many people can afford this? I think what my energy is doing is fantastic, real advocate of this company, for me it's about how possible is this for people on lower incomes who actually need this more
If the Libbi controller can intelligently manage energy paths, does that mean it can do islanding? In other words, if the Grid connection goes down can it power the house/charge the car from the stored energy like Robert's Tesla setup can? Might be handy in the coming world of Grid blackouts.
It possibly could. But it would need to installed on the house's mains with an automatic transfer switch (ATS) that can physically disconnect the house from the grid when the software detects such a grid outage. When running without any support from the grid (total off-grid mode), the home battery and its inverter need some beefy surge current capability to handle large "inrush current" from turning on like kitchen heating appliances and especially garage plugged power tools like table saw, miter saw, etc. Because a big garage power tool can easily briefly spike the power demand to 6000+W which may cause inverters and batteries without that surge capability to trip out and shutdown. These big inrush currents are normally handled by the grid w/o anyone noticing. But, in off-grid mode, you'll notice it when the entire house instantly goes dark because the inverter shutdown from its overcurrent protection systems. Even without the problem of surge loads, the cumulative power flow of simultaneous EV charging (5000+W), kitchen appliances (1800W+) and home clothes dryer (6000+W) could easily overwhelm the system. A single Tesla Power wall is around 5000W output but they can be installed in multiple parallel units. But TV watching, computers use, all the home's lights can easily be handled by a 5000W system without any problems.
According to their website, yes it can, though it's an optional extra. As noted above there's probably an extra contactor or two to be supplied & fitted also to make the switchover seamless. Like a switchover to a hot standby generator.
My project solar system has a switch in the loft for this scenario. Brilluant in the dark! Ive asked for it to be moved when they find some batteries which are as rare as hens teeth apparently.
@@Ifyoudonttakeitucantfakeit I waited 6 months for my battery. But well worth it. It's really helping at this time of year as it's just about giving enough energy to last through the night. Obviously that won't last but think though the next few months I'll be using close to 100 percent of what I generate. The wait is frustrating as I've been there.
I used to take my spare veg oil (run a car & van on it) to a bio-fuel collection company next door to where Myenergy first started up at the old airfield atop the Wolds. They've become really successful in just a few years. Do I save up for a Powerwall or save up for a Myenergy kit???
No bi-directional power from your EV available? That's a deal breaker for me. I have an 80 kWh battery on wheels sitting in my driveway that would make so much sense to power my home when i don't need to go drive anywhere far today.
The important thing for me is that, I can island the system, and provide power to the house when there is a grid failure, or make the choice to go off grid fully if they continue to take the piss. Also I want full control, so that nobody can take control externally if I don't want them (the grid) deciding that they will just help themselves to my power. I say that as in Western Australia, you cannot have a inverter fitted now that the grid cannot turn of remotely.
API would be nice. Even better would be to open source the software so the world community of coders can add more functionality. Also, don't want to depend on their coders for security and updates.
Here in Malta there is no distributor for Myenergi but I found a way to order a Zappi from abroad and have a local electrician wire it up. It’s a great product. I would love a Libby also.
Great idea! Having installed Zappi and Harvi already, I was sold on this right up to the point when the Chief Technology Officer says of the battery "...5.12kW hours, I believe." lol
Has Fully Charged done an episode with Powervault previously? I am pretty sure their battery systems do all of this. Indeed, I remember investigating the “gridflex” scheme, where you are paid by the National Grid to offload battery power during peak times, roughly two years ago. They also make batteries for households using old Nissan Leaf batteries. Also, I would dearly love some more cost benefit analysis on these systems in the show rather than just a sales pitch; transformative change will only occur when the financial numbers are right for a critical mass of households.
I have been having difficulty with the myenergi hub (though the charger has been working really well especially the ability to prioritise charging from my own PV. I called tech support on Thursday who patiently talked me through doing an update; at this point it appeared the hub was faulty and/or had the 1st generation software. They generously offered to send me out a new hub (already updated) and it arrived at 1100 hrs this morning. What an incredible service!
Great video. Love the Myenergi products! I have the Eddi, Harvi, Hub and their product support is also great, thanks to Dr Chris! I look forward to getting a Zappi and Libbi eventually.
Did I hear correctly - the libbi inverter module can be interfaced directly to solar PV? If so, this should simplify a one-shot whole-system install. Hopefully, this will help many take the plunge! With regards to exporting power for a pittance, it's not always the case! A friend (lucky enough to have a Solar PV system on the original FiT) opted for Octopus Symmetry, where the buy and sell prices are the same. He lives in deepest, darkest Teesdale, where power is often not available, and fitted a Tesla Powerwall with Gateway last year, set to export up to 80%, to help reduce the local grid load.
This is a big deal for someone like me, no PV or battery, I can get one unit and plug some PV into it, and it can be installed outside, which makes it possible. The lack of invasive work and ease of installation makes this very high on my list.
We do. It's called Tesla. Tesla has battery storage, EV charging, solar and all the related components managed by a fabulous app that allows a lot of flexibility.
Hi Robert ….. simple question!! Instead of all these expensive batteries and software solutions…. why don’t the network suppliers let the meters run backwards so we get back all the energy we produce? Surely if saving the planet was the aim this could be done easily?? Regards Tony
Hi Robert, looks like a great product line. But I'm always a bit worried about the way the "cost-saving" battery is presented when connected to solar panels. I use about 4500 kW electricity per year and my solar panels produce about the same. However I only use in reality 40% in best case scenario of the electricity from my solar panels. Because in summer they produce about 30kW per day and I only use about 7 per day most of it at night... So a battery could help...I thought. But here in Belgium you pay about 800 EUR/kW battery. So if I put e.g. a 5 kW battery it costs 4.000 EUR. During Spring and Autum I see from the stats of my solar panels from the past 5 years, that I would be able to charge them 50% of the time. During the 4 winter months my solar panels produce less than a 1 kW per day so practically nothing to the battery. And during the summer it can also only be used for 50% because there is too much sun and thus day one is fills it up, uses 50% of it during the night and then day 2 it only can charge it for another 50%... And the rest is the 30 kW is lost to the grid again... So long story short. I put all this in a spreadsheet and it would take 12 to 15 years to earn back the 4.000 EUR investment of the battery... a battery with an invertor with a lifespan of 8 to 10 years and the batteries probably the same... So I don't see any benefit in a home-battery today. Maybe if they cost 2000 EUR for 5kW. But please keep up the good work, I'm a big fan! I bought my first EV (ID4) last year thx to your channel and loving it.
Do you have the option of cheaper electricity at night in Belgium? Here in the UK I will charge the battery with cheap night rate electricity in the winter when there is not enough sun.
@@lib_f Yes and no. Originally there was but they are terminating that benefit, because they see that more and more people are changing their car at night and thus won't have the capacity to spare
@@lib_f I also don't understand why home-battery has to cost about 800 EUR/kW while in a car it costs about 200 EUR/kW. It can't be that the batteries are so different because car industry claims that "old car" batteries could still be used for home batteries... So if that is true why are they 4 times more expensive?
@@lib_f Also don't forget that putting electricity in your battery and taking it out again "costs" between 5 and 10% energy that you lose...so that it costs more
Really nice products, and interesting use-cases. Little worried about the services comment, does this mean monthly fees for using the devices is coming in the future ?
So a big question is will the libbi work alongside an existing battery system such as solar edge? Essentially using the dumb battery (solar edge) as pure storage and the libbi as your smart storage that you can talk to with other systems? This would be super handy to know! As ever excellent content from the team here!
I have a SolarEdge System with battery. I use Solarmanager for exactly this use cases. It controls go-e EV charger, my heatpump and multiple smart plugs.
If you have the SolarEdge energy hub inverter you would be best to use their ev charger, battery, hot water management and smart plugs, mixing and matching ecosystems can have some interesting compatibility issues or you may not get the desired results. With the energy hub you should be able to connect close to 30kWh of storage per inverter (and with each battery you can add another 5kW of panels)
I use a 48v Hybrid SolarEdge Inverter with connected DIY 48v battery. That was the most economical choice since I paid around 2300 CHF (2000 GBP) for 15kWh of storage including the BMS. I'm not aware that SolarEdge offers things like smart plugs and heat pump management plus their wallbox is triple the price of a go-e. That's why I choose Solar Manager as a central management app to connect and manage all the devices from different manufacturers. For sure there are multiple management solutions, in my opinion it’s important that the solution is customizable and supports lot of devices, manufacturers and API’s. If you have a bit of technical knowledge, you should be able to integrate and manage new devices by yourself. Would be a pity to always get e technician onsite if you want to extend your managed devices.
The depth of content on Fully Charged puts it at the top in giving us a much broader understanding of the great cultural change we will all be experiencing as the electric future charges towards us. Thank you for this peek into the solutions that will enable us to support our very existence.....watching ev car reviews is just candyfloss, but this type of information clearly shows us how we can sustain it.
There was a similarly interesting system shown here several years ago, using liquid flow batteries, in Australia. Not sure if there's been a follow-up on that. I'd like to see more development of static storage batteries that *don't* use lithium-ion, given all the ecological and human damage mining the materials to make those does. I'd save those (at least the brand-new ones) for vehicle propulsion, where energy density and power density per both volume and weight are crucial. For something sitting in a garage or basement and powering home appliances, those factors are not really important; cost (both up-front and ongoing operations/maintenance), reliability and longevity are much more important. And if we're trying to "save the planet" then the materials, mining & manufacturing processes & such need to factor in as well.
Brilliant video showcasing the great work being done by Myenergi. I've been a customer of theirs for about 18 months and really love their products. I have two home batteries but they are from a different manufacturer (Sofar Solar), so I am not able to do what the Myenergi solution can do. If the Myenergi battery solution had been available when I was making my decision to invest I would certainly have gone with the Libbi instead. 😞 It's great to see how Myenergi are developing their product range though and I can say from personal experience that a solar PV, Eddie, Hub, Zappi and home battery solution really does work!
You missed the most important aspect of this storage system. What is the number of charge cycles and which chemistry are they using. Also where are the batteries sourced.
How can we give this episode a thousand thumbs up 👍👍👍👍👍 well done Myenergi & FullyCharged . Brilliant news about the Libbi, if I hadn’t already got my existing Solis inverter & Pylontech batteries , this would be my ideal system. The integration with the Zappi & Eddi is excellent. As Tom mentioned , the lack of agreed standards about how different inverters, batteries, & car chargers integrate together makes managing the power available a bit of a pain. Being able to have a DC coupled battery system, that can charge from the grid is a real bonus. Charge up overnight on cheaper , and often greener power to save having to use peak energy at top prices. This will begin to help the grid wean itself off the dirty fossil fuels we are currently still so reliant on.
@@rogerphelps9939 Oh. That's disappointing. Well, hopefully the tech will improve over time. I'm the US where I don't think you can even get this yet, so I have to wait anyway.
I hate when we call giving back to the grid 'WASTE' it isnt waste!! its helping the grid which we all rely on! in theory its actually good to distribute to the grid - there is less transmission loss if your solar is giving its electrons to your neighbor. This is a major way we can work together! intelligent management will be the key to managing\balancing our modern distributed smart grid (MDSG)
Not all locations will credit power returned to the grid at the same rate as used from the grid. Iirc arizona dosnt allow you to feed into the grid at all anymore though I may be incorrect on that part. Many states are passing laws that power sent to the grid is to be paid at the bulk price that plants are paid, instead of crediting you back at the price you’d pay for using power, meaning you’d have to return vastly more energy than you use to even break even, making home power storage that much more lucrative to stave off power bills in the long run
Interesting and nicely produced video! I upvote when I see a reference to Red Dwarf. Having it made by the actor that played Kryton makes it even better. A mechanoid would also have found the topic of power storage fascinating - fine electron dining storage 🙂 As for Libbi, it will be interesting once they go into production, and if it will be shipped in the EU (watching from Denmark).
If we calculate the kwh you get for the price it seems a bit expensive compared to others, almost 6400 dollars for 5kwh with only a 3.5kwh inverter isn't really stellar.
Good for the competition. Even better if more people are made aware of it. I've been in the DIY, off grid, solar community, for some time, so battery storage, is old news to us. But for the newbies, all they hear about is the Tesla Powerwall. Tesla is a premium brand. Its akin to trying to sell a luxury car, to someone that really needs an economy car. Another issue is wasting lithium ion batteries, on something that doesn't move, hence doesn't need it ! If you have the space, other battery technologies like old fashion lead acid (deep cycle, electric forklift) batteries is often a better option. The company featured, here, is great for those who can't find the business end of a screw driver.
Agree about want to see more individuals who have gone down this semi off-grid battery route. I know a screwdriver when I see one. Where would you recommend to read about the simpler s ok lutions you talk about. Thanks
I've been looking forward to this review - I'd pretty much decided on GivEnergy over Tesla, and may still do that as Libbi is so new and untested, but I definitely want to get Zappi and Eddi, and getting Libbi to make an integrated system with those is definitely appealing.
These integrated inverter and battery solutions are great but I really wish they would offer bigger capacity inverters for those of us that have/want to install a >5kw solar array. This is a real choke point and forces you to source separate inverter and battery solutions.
The infographic did seem to show more than one inverter - one of which had one attached battery modules and the other had a second battery module. I would ask them about your use case - do please let us know the answer?
I love the sound of most of this, apart from one element... The point of a battery is to offset the cost of electricity (aside from the environmental reasons of course). If I've paid for a product to store renewable energy, that I've generated from solar panels I've also paid for, I'll be incredibly annoyed if someone via the internet begins using that energy to support a grid that is charging such a huge amount of money for the same energy out of nothing more than pure greed. If I've paid to generate it and I've paid to store it, I'll be damned if I'm going to let someone else decide to give it away to 'help' a multi-billion pound company avoid sorting out their shortfalls. If they're happy to buy it from me at the same price they're selling it, I'm 100% in 👍
We got wind of this 2 days ago. We're renovating our home next year and replacing entire heating system with IR radiators, mixergy, as many solar panels as we can get and batteries. We love myenergi products, have a zappi. We already planned to go with an Eddi possibly a harvi, but it was such a headache to figure out on inverters,batteries and other bits we needed. The minute we heard, we've put our names down to be first to get news about prices. We're on their emailing list. Looks like a well integrated piece of kit. As always it comes down to price. Our local solar expert fitter is close to the company and he's waiting to be trained up about fitting them etc. And he's told us there are lots of people asking him if he could fit one already. We're waiting on his feedback on his opinion of it. We're looking at getting the larger inverter, so if we need to we can add extra batteries in the future.
Presume the customers can sign up or sign off from the grid support features as these will shorten the life of the battery, so there has to be some cost benefit. What cell chemistry are they using would have been interesting
This made my heart sing... This should be on the national news and be shouted from the rooftops, UK inovation for all.
Myenergy in Grimsby is the most positive bright kind of smart future were going toward. Well done.
Everytime Robert features MyEnergi I get a good feeling about the company. More power to their collective elbow.
If you hadn't made this video I'd have never have known this was in Grimsby, great for the area, this part of England really needs these types of jobs.
Who knows how big myenegi would be if they could market and sell into Europe more easily
@@edc1569 ugh, don't remind me of Brexit!
Without a price it's hard to know whether it really is cheaper energy (or cheaper than the power wall)
Yep it's just a sales pitch otherwise..
Yea, I am hoping they don't go above £2k per 5kWh battery and no more than £1500 for the inverter.
You hit the nail on the head.The most important part of the conversation is HOW MUCH?
The cells themselves cost around €100-150 per kWh. Most cheap batteries (without Inverter) are available at around €350 per kWh. So let's see what this one will cost
@@djrrmml7514 I was basing my numbers on Pylontech (well established brand) and Jakiper (sub-brand of Orient Power), plus giving them some added margin.
Importantly, acknowledging your assertion, batteries are utterly commodity, if they can't reach that price, it'll be selling on hype and not value.
I live 16 miles south of Grimsby, and never even knew this firm existed. I go to Grimsby weekly too.
Got a Zappi and Eddi being installed soon - in no small part thanks to Fully Charged’s coverage. It’s great to support a young British company with big ideas.
Make sure your installer fully sets up the software on the Eddi - the whole pairing thing and API key was painful for me.
@@IanMcc1000 that sounds like useful advice, thank you.
Great to see a UK company creating this, lets just hope the cost makes it a huge success.
Their Zappi seems to be selling well & most people stick to one brand when diversifying tech because mixing brands is much harder to integrate.
@@integralevideo please explain?
Unfortunately in this country it is why sell it at a decent price when you can sell it at a really high price and make a killing off the first sale and then the company goes under and a good idea gone.
@@integralevideo tell us more not seen tis set up before?
This is a rebranded Chinese product.
This is where the gov needs to be investing our money.
Would really appreciate a video on comparing inverters and battery options for various size solar arrays. It's a mine field out there with so many options it's hard to know what to choose
Yea I agree that would be very useful for people trying to work out what would work for them
Er....this one.
The difficulty is that it's not just down to the PV array size.
If you have a 4kW array, but have a high base load in your house, there is no need for a battery.
If you have a very low base load during daylight hours, but higher in the evening, then a 15kw battery is probably useful.
What we have seen in practice is that most people would be OK with around 5-7kwh of storage.
However having an expandable system is a benefit as you can add depending on what you need.
Looks like the my energi can do this, but similarly options like BYD hvs / hvm can expand depending on your requirements.
Hi have enphase micro inverters i7 on my 16 solar panels which helps if shading occurs on the panels, this goes to a Lux inverter in the garage, then have 5 pylontech batteries that it charges. The batteries used because same amount of a powerwall but half the price. Hope that helps
This is a rebranding of the Kstar Blue-s series battery with inverter series. With better software to fit into the ecosystem. But probably also at a higher price.
Why why why wasn't there a discussion about bi-directional charging from the EV back into the home ecosystem? Vehicle-to-load is an important technology and it's disappointing for it not to get an airing here - a real missed opportunity.
The technology exists but here in the UK we seem to have been forgotten about - the early Nissan Leafs were shown plugged in to them and were reported to have kept the electricity going into home during an earthquake in Japan. I think we need these asap, and with talks of blackouts this winter and the high cost of electricity, they would be a huge benefit to the country. On top of that, they'd be a lot cheaper than a battery and better for the environment as no new battery materials would need to be sourced.
they do not make the car, so have no control what the car can do, seems logical to me.
The international standard for vehicle to grid power management haven’t been fully finalised.
Once they are more grid operators will be able to look at deploying.
Many car manufacturers may then over the air update their cars.
Should add a lot of car manufacturers are less keen because it will shorten the effective life of the car battery.
I want this! Got a Tesla & a massive commercial solar system at work. I’d love to come home & plug the car to the house to run it overnight. I know in the US the Ford F150 has a whole system for vehicle to house power! It would be a massive benefit then wouldn’t need a home battery!
Is it part of the CCS spec?
Want! Thanks Robert and team for keeping up the great work highlighting the Green tech we all love!
Great to see the implementation of the intelligent grid. This is the kind of innovation we need and hopefully this becomes a succes soon.
I have a 5.5kW solar PV system and a Tesla Powerwall battery. In my opinion, you need at least 10kWh battery storage capacity to make powering the house almost all year round viable. I get about 93% annual self sufficiency, with a further 2200kWh going to the grid (which I earn around £700 for on the Octopus Agile Outgoing tarrif). I also heat my domestic hot water for 8 months of the year by turning off the HW side of my gas boiler. The ideal would be an electric car with V2P, to be charged on the surplus solar PV energy. Don'y forget, even the best EV's only manage abour 4 miles per kWh, so a 5 kWh storage battery would power the car for 20 miles tops! Charging a car using a cheap overnight tarrif or during the day using spare solar energy makes the most sense. Designing software to make the 3 power sources (solar PV, storage battery, EV battery) talk to eack other is a big step forward.
how about they apply some modern tech and add one of the few 95% efficient panels that have been hidden away and slap one on the car roof.
Recently, I had both a Zappi and Harvi installed, and I can honestly say they allow me to do everything I'd dreamt of being able to do (e.g. charge my car completely of solar if I want to), and more besides. Great to see the company and people behind such a well-designed and easy-to-use product. Can't wait to see if/when the Libbi comes to Australia - will definitely consider getting it if so.
Being in Australia you have a great advantage over us Poms. The sun actually shines quite a lot over there!
@@rogerphelps9939 I live in West Australia with a 5KWH array on my roof now. I can honestly say with an average of 8 hour a day of sunshine that I've seen a company actively marketing this type of power management for my home in West Aust. It's a shame, because in my diesel powered Off Grid camper RV I have a solution by Redarc that allow me to camp with ease using self powered electricity.
Have you done any sums on how much the cost both environmentally and monetarily your return is? I think not…
I have a Zappi and it’s great for charging off my excess solar in the UK. We get paid such a poor amount for what we send back to the grid that you want to make use of it yourself. Zappi allow me to do that
I want one here as well.. !!! Question is what price!?
I'm an engineer and I'm really impressed by the MyEnergi products. I'm yet to use them but will be putting them in our new home. I particularly liked the fact that the Zappi charger monitors your grid connection (amps on each phase) and will reduce the car charging to ensure that your grid connection supply rating is not exceeded. Also, fully integrated 'out of the box' saves soo much hassle (and potential disappointment). when trying to integrate products from different manufacturers.
Most EV chargers should do this via a CT clamp.
After all the teasers about a new product from My Energi it’s great to see it. Looking forward to hearing about an operational virtual power plant based on thousands of them.
Absolutely brilliant what they, MyEnergi, are doing. I have my name down for a 10kw battery and know I can do my part to help me, the grid and the environment.
Do you know which battery chemistry they are using?
@@MrPhlipflop It's important that the various companies try to avoid proprietary systems. Just as no one renewable energy producer is going to be the answer, storage systems will be diverse too.
How much was the 10kw battery? Have you been given an estimated delivery date?
If I get a battery this is the one I will get. Will perfectly integrate with my existing MyEnergi system. Just a pity the installers in Germany are so lacking.
5:30-5:34 time stamp TOO FUNNY!!! So good given the serious nature of energy requirement that humor is not lost along the way. Loved your performance on Red Dwarf! Best wishes!
Such a clear system. I can't wait to have this ecosystem installed on my house!
Just brilliant Robert! Top notch. Good to see you on this channel. The future is clean renewable and controllable energy!
Brilliant idea. I'm surprised the big energy companies didn't think of this.
Thay have, but they make more money from old technologies using oil and coal.
@@PiDsPagePrototypes and they probably don't want to spend their Porsche money on R&D.
@@ninelaivz4334 Or paying the workers properly,..
absolutely delighted to see that there is now a form of home management system. it's a really important next step and with the integrated home batteries, finally a complete system is available. very very cool
Love it! It's so good to see a UK company making a real difference in green energy space. Thank you Fully Charged for bringing this to the mainstream. I'm looking at a sola, battery, car charging system and this fits the bill.
I'm also a dwafa, love ya Kryten!
the company is wasting electricity powering an LED sign that says "GREEN AF"
i guess their employees didn't learn what an oxymoron was in school.
@@jimmyhackers8980 They showed they had solar, at least it is in the app demo, so maybe it’s their own energy and they should be able to choose what they want to do with it. Also an LED is very low in energy.
They are showing a connected future. Whatever the idiots say, that can’t take that away!
@@comeinhandynow you're an idiot.
@@simonperrins5175 they are showing a future where hipsters mugg off innocent people
I have been operating as a microgrid for past 4 years with my 13.2 kWh solar PV system coupled by my two Powerwalls (27 kWh) for ~ 9 months of the year and only draw grid energy from November through early February. We generally export about 50% of our excess solar energy back to grid and live in Edmonds, WA in USA.
Without fail, Robert always makes me laugh.
Another cracking video, and the Libbi seems to be a cracking addition to the myenergi range of devices. ❤
Robert should get into comedy properly, maybe get on TV
@@Slash1066 I hope this is sarcastic irony.😂
Still doesn’t answer the question ….how much will it cost ?
There is no indication of costs on the myenergi website
It will be cheaper than grid power. At current prices, two or three years to repay the capital costs. But even if it’s 5 years it’s well worth having.
@@Dave5843-d9m Call me mr picky, I still like to see numbers. Heat pumps are supposed to be the new nirvana for home heating until you look at capital outlay and pay back times. £10000 for external wall insulation, £15000 for heat pump and fitting minus £5000 grant still makes £20000 outlay with payback time even at todays prices of over 20 years. So forgive me, I love these ideas and I genuinely do see their merit but I need numbers
Wonderful to see this technology implemented so intelligently. If the price compares favorable to more broadly available technologies, one can only hope it becomes commonplace.
It looks like a rebranded KStar battery system (CATL cells), with the additional integration module for the myenergi app and comms side. The app and control ecosystem is really slick and just makes it all work well together. As a new build or new system with PV being installed, the hybrid inverter is a really good offer. But this can also be retrofit as an AC coupled system too for existing PV installations.
the company has an electrically powereed LED sign that says "green AF" .... :s
it there ever was an example of an oxymoron.....
You are so right it's dose look like a kstar but I can see why they would do this. Why develop something from scratch with teething pains when you can build on an already developed products but to make it better advanced features.
@@johanncover1988 I agree! And it's not a cut and paste, the interface and controls they have developed to make it work in their ecosystem so smoothly is added value over the original system.
I think the thing that interests me the most is that it can (apparently) be installed outside, that's quite a differentiator.
@@ChrisBaileyMusic I have a similar setup with and emporia EV changer and a solarac equivalent inverter and it took some research/engineering to get it all to work together. While it works "okay" I have to jump between apps to modification as to wear I want power to go and it is very easy to make a mistake. I can definitely appreciate a fully integrated systems from "myenergy" like that.
I have all their previous products and they play well together. But when reviewing home batteries two (related) questions come to mind, when there's a grid outage: (a) can Libbi continue to power the house, and (b) does solar PV continue to charge the battery? In other words where is MyEnergi's equivalant to the Tesla Backup Gateway?
Also, when is Zappi going to enable V2G for CSS charging? Great video, glad to see MyEnergy still inovating.
Seconded, this along with the Tesla Energy Plan is the killer question for me for every alternative to the Tesla Powerwall and Backup Gateway. Can they do full house backup (Island mode) in the event of a grid outage and can they do net-metered, price matched import and export so I'm not getting ripped off in the event that I do export excess solar to the grid?
Everything I'm seeing so far is not giving me a warm and fuzzy feeling.
@@BikerDinger thirded. very important function the backup gateway.
@@BikerDinger I agree, if I can ask a question please, are you on the Tesla Energy Plan and if so how do you get on with it? We export about 1 MW a year of our total production of 4100. We are on Octopus Go Faster, have an electric car and are looking again at the TEP as Go has now risen to 12p per kw off peak and the 5 hour slots are no more, just 4 hours. The Octopus Intelligent plan isn’t available to us as our car and Zappi charger aren’t compatible yet. The TEP appears on the surface to take away any restrictions on charging the car for example ie same cost in and out but working out the economic side of it is difficult because we can’t find any real world examples of anyone using it.
@@lynnfisher4396 Good evening Lynn,
Not yet. I only moved into my current place six months ago. The previous owner installed the panels back before batteries were really a thing. Unfortunately, since I settling in and starting looking every installer I've spoken to is telling me it's anything up to a year's lead time on Powerwalls at present.
Even with that wait time and the cost it's the best option for me. Full house backup while maintaining my generation and price matched import/export is the full package and to my knowledge noone else can match it at this time.
Shame really as the overall MyEnergi range is, to my mind at least, the better option in terms of an integrated solution, mainly because that's what it's designed for. One can only hope future development of the Libbi both in terms of the tech and energy company tariffs can take it the rest of the way.
@@BikerDinger Thanks, it’s worth the wait. Our PW and Gateway has worked flawlessly since it was installed in October 2020. We have had several power cuts and we weren’t even aware of them until we happened to check the app. The 5 kw peak output is so useful. The only real downside is the way the software “ guesses” how much it should refill the battery from the cheap rate electricity in Time Based Control. It normally gets it right but occasionally it hasn’t put anything into the battery and we have had a dull day and nearly run out of electricity in the battery. There are ways to force charge but it’s not as simple or precise as other battery systems allow.
Happy to see that the obvious solution to energy issues is available. Available, when, at what price? Software controlled integration of altenative sources has been the obvious solution for years - since power companies started using computers to control generation and distribution. Baffled why it took so long to create adaptive domestic solutions - maybe wee needed the energy crisis to kick start the manufacturing process.
To be honest, this looks like a polished kickstarter presentation. A whole lot of information, without providing a whole lot of information. When investigating installing an EV charger, it suddenly went from an EV charger through to adding on A. B. C. D etc, and it seems it will be the same with this.
Nice. But missing a key piece of data (well, a few really: price, and then availability, and then Invertor throughput (charging and discharging, and finally, will it be able to deliver grid failure backup...
Wouldn't it be nice to have a version of the Zappi that could use Vehicle to Grid, so you have it as an extra battery in the evenings?
Yes!
I would even be happy with V2H
Another feature I would like is if it could also operate like a gateway to allow your solar to continue to operate during an outage
Intelligent terminals are coming, which means you will be able to use your EV battery to power your home when electricity demand is high.
Pluss the car needs to be compatible, we have VTG but are stuck with a leaf because its the only car on the market that works with VTG
One problem with vehicle to grid: it's kind of hard for a car to soak up extra solar energy during the day for people who need the car to drive the work...you'd essentially have to either work from home, own multiple cars, or get to work by walk, bike, or public transit, in order to get the most use out of it.
@@ab-tf5fl I am retired but lucky enough to have a PV system and 2 Teslas that sit in the garage most of the day. Ideal use case for us would be V2G from Tesla...Apparently it was a feature of the Roadster but was little used - so Elon Musk, being data driven, thinks there is no demand for V2G...
Great company making great products. Really good to see.
I do like the distributed grid battery idea. Hopefully it can be supported by legislation to encourage uptake.
Tesla have done this successfully in California
Totally agree about distributed grid battery - however, I see a danger that all these internet-connected units will be an obvious target for sabotage and hacking from foreign powers. If you fail to deal critically with this issue, then the system will be very vulnerable to this kind of attack.
@@thrustsst There is no real way to abuse those batteries to hurt the grid. If too many are told to deliver power to the grid, the grid frequency would go up, above 50 Hz, and the batteries would stop delivering power. They would have to hack every battery inverter model and circumvent this protection first.
@@Psi-Storm that's not beyond hackers. Don't forget quite a few years ago they hacked tens of millions of security cameras & networked them to take down Twitter.
If you find a way into one device you've found a way into all of them.
@@Psi-Storm if too many just charge the grid you're right, the frequency will drift & they'll trip off but if all of them cycle power at half-second intervals, synchronized, they're likely to cause surges big enough to trip out a substation or 2 & given how flaky USA's power grid has proved to be over the years that might take everything down -- nationwide blackout, possibly with contagion into Canada & Mexico, & taking days to re-start the network.
*_Never_* discount the amount of trouble bad actors can cause because they think it's funny or to make money or to achieve a political outcome.
Interesting video. We have been investigating battery options for the past 6 months or so and have found the journey a real challenge. We have a 4kw solar array (4yrs old and facing south / south west) and are in the south east. We have discovered like so many that you only get a token pay back from the FIT tariff. Having seen our stats for a full year 2021, it is interesting to see what days of the year would be useful to charge a battery pack. We discovered that roughly speaking three months of the year we would struggle to rely on batter power due to poor weather conditions but the rest of the year we could potentially use 100%. The solution seems to be, as you pointed out, an option for cheaper over night electricity tariff to get the 100% use of solar for 12 months.
Tried to find the battery tech specs on the myenergy site but not found them yet although I am sure they are there somewhere. The 10 year warranty seems to be a standard and a good timeline to gauge investment value for those that want to. Generally speaking the battery contents seem to be Lithium Ion Phosphate and these are currently the most reliable. I am curious with your video test setup there was 3.6kWh left in the battery but didn't see the charge level and requirement from the car battery. Would it be most effective for the car to charge overnight on cheap rate electricity in order to use the battery for house use?
The best discharge plan is depending on your energy prices. If you have a peak rate in the evening, then yes it would be optimal to keep enough energy in the battery to cover your house electricity until it switches to off peak and then charge the rest of the car with off peak electricity. On the other hand battery storage systems are currently still so expensive that most will die before you got your money back in energy savings.
a web search tonight of 'myenergi libbi specs' produces several very recent results, you might want to try again.
@@Psi-Storm you might want to recheck your maths now that electricity prices have shot up, what was a 20-year payback is now less than 5 years in many instances.
@@alanhat5252 What voodoo magic are you applying to get to 5 years? A well balanced pv battery system gets 250 full cycles a year. Even if we assume you would save 30 cents a kwh, a 10kwh battery system has to cost only 3750€ to break even in 5 years. At the moment you pay at least 7k for the battery, 1500 for the inverter and another 1000 for the smart meter and installation cost. In reality you have to also add the storage loss and the income loss from no longer providing the pv electricity to the grid. I currently pay 25 cents for electricity in Germany, while i get 8 cents for pv grid feeding. So in reality i save less than 20 cents from self storage.
...everything about this video is AWESOME! (am particularly proud to be able to say these products are designed and manufactured here in the UK. Go GB - we can do it!)
Love you Britain xxx
This is really intersting . I would say that 5kw is NOT actually that much power. Especially if you have an electric oven . Youd really need atleast 3 of these units stacked together which begs the question how much are they ?
yeah I can burn 5kw making toast!
I was thinking the same thing, already have a 12kWh battery but it's not enough to get through night-time and then a cloudy day, upgrading to 20kWh is my next move. People often make the mistake of having a too small battery with their solar installation - especially if they intend to stop using gas.
KW or kwh? 🙄
Glad for everyone there.
I like their point on it working together. I have small solar and never really had enough ‘spare’ for days when the clouds came over (the zappi needs a minimum of 1.4kw to charge a car so anything below that it’d start/stop and thats not good for the car). With a battery it can buffer to smooth out those interruptions so it can make EV charging practical on solar even with a fairly small array
Why is it bad for the car?
@@edc1569 I don’t think it damages them, but if they start/stop/start/stop often they’ll often refuse to take a charge until you disconnect and reconnect again. So if your solar excess isn’t safely above the minimum it can be hard to use (but battery solves that)
I can get zappi to work at 1.2kw. Agree though that on eco++ that can be a problem. Tend to use eco most of the time.
@@davidhumphries3614 Given what the UK weather is like the Zappi ought to be able to work down to just a few hundred watts. It does not, so, if the constraint is not on the car side, the design of Zappi is not fit for purpose.
@@rogerphelps9939 It is on the app side as n the scale of 0-99kWh, I can’t move it closer to 0 than 1.2kWh.
This is all excellent work from companies such as my energy. The challenge is this, how much for the entire system? Solar panels, car charger, inverter and batteries.........15k - 20k. How many people can afford this?
I think what my energy is doing is fantastic, real advocate of this company, for me it's about how possible is this for people on lower incomes who actually need this more
If the Libbi controller can intelligently manage energy paths, does that mean it can do islanding? In other words, if the Grid connection goes down can it power the house/charge the car from the stored energy like Robert's Tesla setup can? Might be handy in the coming world of Grid blackouts.
It possibly could. But it would need to installed on the house's mains with an automatic transfer switch (ATS) that can physically disconnect the house from the grid when the software detects such a grid outage.
When running without any support from the grid (total off-grid mode), the home battery and its inverter need some beefy surge current capability to handle large "inrush current" from turning on like kitchen heating appliances and especially garage plugged power tools like table saw, miter saw, etc. Because a big garage power tool can easily briefly spike the power demand to 6000+W which may cause inverters and batteries without that surge capability to trip out and shutdown. These big inrush currents are normally handled by the grid w/o anyone noticing. But, in off-grid mode, you'll notice it when the entire house instantly goes dark because the inverter shutdown from its overcurrent protection systems.
Even without the problem of surge loads, the cumulative power flow of simultaneous EV charging (5000+W), kitchen appliances (1800W+) and home clothes dryer (6000+W) could easily overwhelm the system. A single Tesla Power wall is around 5000W output but they can be installed in multiple parallel units. But TV watching, computers use, all the home's lights can easily be handled by a 5000W system without any problems.
According to their website, yes it can, though it's an optional extra. As noted above there's probably an extra contactor or two to be supplied & fitted also to make the switchover seamless. Like a switchover to a hot standby generator.
My project solar system has a switch in the loft for this scenario. Brilluant in the dark!
Ive asked for it to be moved when they find some batteries which are as rare as hens teeth apparently.
@@Ifyoudonttakeitucantfakeit friend of mine just had a 300ah LiFePo delivered this week for his camper. He ordered it in late May.
@@Ifyoudonttakeitucantfakeit I waited 6 months for my battery. But well worth it. It's really helping at this time of year as it's just about giving enough energy to last through the night. Obviously that won't last but think though the next few months I'll be using close to 100 percent of what I generate. The wait is frustrating as I've been there.
Excellent video, very exciting times
Would love to know a price for this as I'm in the process of getting quotes for solar panelling
Great video, great to see a great company doing great green work in Great Grimsby! :)
I used to take my spare veg oil (run a car & van on it) to a bio-fuel collection company next door to where Myenergy first started up at the old airfield atop the Wolds. They've become really successful in just a few years. Do I save up for a Powerwall or save up for a Myenergy kit???
No bi-directional power from your EV available? That's a deal breaker for me. I have an 80 kWh battery on wheels sitting in my driveway that would make so much sense to power my home when i don't need to go drive anywhere far today.
The important thing for me is that, I can island the system, and provide power to the house when there is a grid failure, or make the choice to go off grid fully if they continue to take the piss.
Also I want full control, so that nobody can take control externally if I don't want them (the grid) deciding that they will just help themselves to my power.
I say that as in Western Australia, you cannot have a inverter fitted now that the grid cannot turn of remotely.
What a brilliant system. Hope myenergi release an official API so it can be integrated with wider building management systems too.
API would be nice. Even better would be to open source the software so the world community of coders can add more functionality. Also, don't want to depend on their coders for security and updates.
Here in Malta there is no distributor for Myenergi but I found a way to order a Zappi from abroad and have a local electrician wire it up. It’s a great product. I would love a Libby also.
is libbi really better than tesla powerwall 2 and Gateway standard price is between £10,290 - £12,190
Great idea! Having installed Zappi and Harvi already, I was sold on this right up to the point when the Chief Technology Officer says of the battery "...5.12kW hours, I believe." lol
Up to 4x batteries = 20kW
I’d love to see this being rolled out in a modern housing development to run the street lamps etc.
Has Fully Charged done an episode with Powervault previously? I am pretty sure their battery systems do all of this. Indeed, I remember investigating the “gridflex” scheme, where you are paid by the National Grid to offload battery power during peak times, roughly two years ago. They also make batteries for households using old Nissan Leaf batteries. Also, I would dearly love some more cost benefit analysis on these systems in the show rather than just a sales pitch; transformative change will only occur when the financial numbers are right for a critical mass of households.
Yes he has two powerwalls
Yes they have a couple of years ago. Powervault works really well and is very similar.
I have been having difficulty with the myenergi hub (though the charger has been working really well especially the ability to prioritise charging from my own PV. I called tech support on Thursday who patiently talked me through doing an update; at this point it appeared the hub was faulty and/or had the 1st generation software. They generously offered to send me out a new hub (already updated) and it arrived at 1100 hrs this morning. What an incredible service!
Great video. Love the Myenergi products! I have the Eddi, Harvi, Hub and their product support is also great, thanks to Dr Chris! I look forward to getting a Zappi and Libbi eventually.
I currently think that this is the solution to green energy intermittency and grid stabilization. Keep going!
Did I hear correctly - the libbi inverter module can be interfaced directly to solar PV? If so, this should simplify a one-shot whole-system install. Hopefully, this will help many take the plunge!
With regards to exporting power for a pittance, it's not always the case! A friend (lucky enough to have a Solar PV system on the original FiT) opted for Octopus Symmetry, where the buy and sell prices are the same. He lives in deepest, darkest Teesdale, where power is often not available, and fitted a Tesla Powerwall with Gateway last year, set to export up to 80%, to help reduce the local grid load.
That's what I understand, it's an inverter, charge controller and battery all in one.
This is a big deal for someone like me, no PV or battery, I can get one unit and plug some PV into it, and it can be installed outside, which makes it possible. The lack of invasive work and ease of installation makes this very high on my list.
Cheeky work as always Robert, you should be minister For enthusiasm.
I do hope that we get a business like MyEnergi here in the US!
Ikr
@@Adrian_kal Trusting your scooter to a Chinese-made battery is one thing. Trusting it to not burn down your house... Uh, yeah... 😑😑
We do. It's called Tesla. Tesla has battery storage, EV charging, solar and all the related components managed by a fabulous app that allows a lot of flexibility.
@@mkkm945 ok, but we need MORE than a single option.
@@sh969 Sure & this company seems to tick the right boxes. This sort of ecosystem is perfect for sprawling Suburbia.
Congratulations to Myenergi, another wonderful product 🎉😊
Hi Robert ….. simple question!! Instead of all these expensive batteries and software solutions…. why don’t the network suppliers let the meters run backwards so we get back all the energy we produce? Surely if saving the planet was the aim this could be done easily??
Regards
Tony
I don’t have one, but a PowerWall can also feedback into the grid, Tesla has VPP or virtual power plant that has similar logic and capabilities.
Hi Robert, looks like a great product line. But I'm always a bit worried about the way the "cost-saving" battery is presented when connected to solar panels. I use about 4500 kW electricity per year and my solar panels produce about the same. However I only use in reality 40% in best case scenario of the electricity from my solar panels. Because in summer they produce about 30kW per day and I only use about 7 per day most of it at night...
So a battery could help...I thought. But here in Belgium you pay about 800 EUR/kW battery. So if I put e.g. a 5 kW battery it costs 4.000 EUR. During Spring and Autum I see from the stats of my solar panels from the past 5 years, that I would be able to charge them 50% of the time. During the 4 winter months my solar panels produce less than a 1 kW per day so practically nothing to the battery. And during the summer it can also only be used for 50% because there is too much sun and thus day one is fills it up, uses 50% of it during the night and then day 2 it only can charge it for another 50%... And the rest is the 30 kW is lost to the grid again... So long story short. I put all this in a spreadsheet and it would take 12 to 15 years to earn back the 4.000 EUR investment of the battery... a battery with an invertor with a lifespan of 8 to 10 years and the batteries probably the same... So I don't see any benefit in a home-battery today. Maybe if they cost 2000 EUR for 5kW. But please keep up the good work, I'm a big fan! I bought my first EV (ID4) last year thx to your channel and loving it.
Do you have the option of cheaper electricity at night in Belgium? Here in the UK I will charge the battery with cheap night rate electricity in the winter when there is not enough sun.
@@lib_f Yes and no. Originally there was but they are terminating that benefit, because they see that more and more people are changing their car at night and thus won't have the capacity to spare
@@lib_f I also don't understand why home-battery has to cost about 800 EUR/kW while in a car it costs about 200 EUR/kW. It can't be that the batteries are so different because car industry claims that "old car" batteries could still be used for home batteries... So if that is true why are they 4 times more expensive?
@@lib_f Also don't forget that putting electricity in your battery and taking it out again "costs" between 5 and 10% energy that you lose...so that it costs more
Libbi ordered, to go with the rest of our Myenergi solutions. Just waiting to hear back from them now for fitting
Really nice products, and interesting use-cases. Little worried about the services comment, does this mean monthly fees for using the devices is coming in the future ?
You'd hope if they end up setting up a virtual power station as planned that some additional income would flow to you.
@@MrChristiangraham Tesla VPG people in the U.S. have been getting around $40 per month from collectively supplying their local grid.
Basically a role model company for the UK going forward.
Does Libbi integrate the gateway functionality need to isolate the batteries from the grid during a power outage?
do hope that they will be at fully charged Australia . great video. keep smiling everyone
So a big question is will the libbi work alongside an existing battery system such as solar edge? Essentially using the dumb battery (solar edge) as pure storage and the libbi as your smart storage that you can talk to with other systems? This would be super handy to know! As ever excellent content from the team here!
I have a SolarEdge System with battery. I use Solarmanager for exactly this use cases. It controls go-e EV charger, my heatpump and multiple smart plugs.
If you’ve just brought solar edge battery then I’d get the most from that.
If you have the SolarEdge energy hub inverter you would be best to use their ev charger, battery, hot water management and smart plugs, mixing and matching ecosystems can have some interesting compatibility issues or you may not get the desired results.
With the energy hub you should be able to connect close to 30kWh of storage per inverter (and with each battery you can add another 5kW of panels)
I use a 48v Hybrid SolarEdge Inverter with connected DIY 48v battery. That was the most economical choice since I paid around 2300 CHF (2000 GBP) for 15kWh of storage including the BMS. I'm not aware that SolarEdge offers things like smart plugs and heat pump management plus their wallbox is triple the price of a go-e. That's why I choose Solar Manager as a central management app to connect and manage all the devices from different manufacturers.
For sure there are multiple management solutions, in my opinion it’s important that the solution is customizable and supports lot of devices, manufacturers and API’s. If you have a bit of technical knowledge, you should be able to integrate and manage new devices by yourself. Would be a pity to always get e technician onsite if you want to extend your managed devices.
@@patrickdiener6065 Where or how did you get that setup so cheaply? Do you have some buying links?
I noticed that your materials are musically illustrated. it's cool and congratulates on quality.
Very exciting to see more battery options out there, looks like a sweet piece of kit!
Libbi is what I imagine our parents call us behind our backs!
This is really cool. On this side of the pond, they like to dangle in home batteries, but never want to talk about it when doing a home assessment.
I might have missed it, but there wasn't any mention of pricing?
We don’t know a price yet as you’d always buy a Libbi through an installer so I’m assuming prices will vary.
expensive AF lol
The depth of content on Fully Charged puts it at the top in giving us a much broader understanding of the great cultural change we will all be experiencing as the electric future charges towards us. Thank you for this peek into the solutions that will enable us to support our very existence.....watching ev car reviews is just candyfloss, but this type of information clearly shows us how we can sustain it.
There was a similarly interesting system shown here several years ago, using liquid flow batteries, in Australia. Not sure if there's been a follow-up on that.
I'd like to see more development of static storage batteries that *don't* use lithium-ion, given all the ecological and human damage mining the materials to make those does. I'd save those (at least the brand-new ones) for vehicle propulsion, where energy density and power density per both volume and weight are crucial. For something sitting in a garage or basement and powering home appliances, those factors are not really important; cost (both up-front and ongoing operations/maintenance), reliability and longevity are much more important. And if we're trying to "save the planet" then the materials, mining & manufacturing processes & such need to factor in as well.
Redflow is still going. Getting a few larger contracts now but still challenged even with its newest model for domestic situation.
Brilliant video showcasing the great work being done by Myenergi.
I've been a customer of theirs for about 18 months and really love their products. I have two home batteries but they are from a different manufacturer (Sofar Solar), so I am not able to do what the Myenergi solution can do. If the Myenergi battery solution had been available when I was making my decision to invest I would certainly have gone with the Libbi instead. 😞
It's great to see how Myenergi are developing their product range though and I can say from personal experience that a solar PV, Eddie, Hub, Zappi and home battery solution really does work!
You missed the most important aspect of this storage system. What is the number of charge cycles and which chemistry are they using. Also where are the batteries sourced.
Like the subtle nod @ 5:29 😊
Really interesting to see all the new things that can be done and all this great technology being available
How can we give this episode a thousand thumbs up 👍👍👍👍👍 well done Myenergi & FullyCharged . Brilliant news about the Libbi, if I hadn’t already got my existing Solis inverter & Pylontech batteries , this would be my ideal system. The integration with the Zappi & Eddi is excellent. As Tom mentioned , the lack of agreed standards about how different inverters, batteries, & car chargers integrate together makes managing the power available a bit of a pain. Being able to have a DC coupled battery system, that can charge from the grid is a real bonus. Charge up overnight on cheaper , and often greener power to save having to use peak energy at top prices. This will begin to help the grid wean itself off the dirty fossil fuels we are currently still so reliant on.
ISO 15118 & OCPP for bi-directional car charging, Modbus for everything else?
Simply the ability to slow down the car charging to avoid using grid power would be wonderful.
It really isn't enough. Given the UK weather the minimum charging power ought to be a few hundred watts, not the 1.4kw that the Zappi goes down to.
@@rogerphelps9939 Oh. That's disappointing. Well, hopefully the tech will improve over time. I'm the US where I don't think you can even get this yet, so I have to wait anyway.
They are doing fantastic things! Thanks for sharing their story.
I hate when we call giving back to the grid 'WASTE' it isnt waste!! its helping the grid which we all rely on! in theory its actually good to distribute to the grid - there is less transmission loss if your solar is giving its electrons to your neighbor. This is a major way we can work together! intelligent management will be the key to managing\balancing our modern distributed smart grid (MDSG)
Not all locations will credit power returned to the grid at the same rate as used from the grid. Iirc arizona dosnt allow you to feed into the grid at all anymore though I may be incorrect on that part. Many states are passing laws that power sent to the grid is to be paid at the bulk price that plants are paid, instead of crediting you back at the price you’d pay for using power, meaning you’d have to return vastly more energy than you use to even break even, making home power storage that much more lucrative to stave off power bills in the long run
Noticed the roof of the new factory is basically a solar farm, very clever design. All new builds should be like this.
Looking forward to this being eventually available in Canada
Yes please and asap
Never seen this channel before.. just randomly started watching… now I miss junkyard wars
Interesting and nicely produced video! I upvote when I see a reference to Red Dwarf. Having it made by the actor that played Kryton makes it even better. A mechanoid would also have found the topic of power storage fascinating - fine electron dining storage 🙂 As for Libbi, it will be interesting once they go into production, and if it will be shipped in the EU (watching from Denmark).
If we calculate the kwh you get for the price it seems a bit expensive compared to others, almost 6400 dollars for 5kwh with only a 3.5kwh inverter isn't really stellar.
Good for the competition. Even better if more people are made aware of it. I've been in the DIY, off grid, solar community, for some time, so battery storage, is old news to us. But for the newbies, all they hear about is the Tesla Powerwall. Tesla is a premium brand. Its akin to trying to sell a luxury car, to someone that really needs an economy car. Another issue is wasting lithium ion batteries, on something that doesn't move, hence doesn't need it ! If you have the space, other battery technologies like old fashion lead acid (deep cycle, electric forklift) batteries is often a better option. The company featured, here, is great for those who can't find the business end of a screw driver.
Agree about want to see more individuals who have gone down this semi off-grid battery route.
I know a screwdriver when I see one.
Where would you recommend to read about the simpler s ok lutions you talk about. Thanks
I've been looking forward to this review - I'd pretty much decided on GivEnergy over Tesla, and may still do that as Libbi is so new and untested, but I definitely want to get Zappi and Eddi, and getting Libbi to make an integrated system with those is definitely appealing.
Wow. It's massive!
We have x2 GivEnergy 9.5 batteries with a Zappi and Eddi and it works flawless, go for it as these Libbi prices will be high.
At last a happy story to come out of Grimsby.
These integrated inverter and battery solutions are great but I really wish they would offer bigger capacity inverters for those of us that have/want to install a >5kw solar array. This is a real choke point and forces you to source separate inverter and battery solutions.
But you can Daisey chain them together to achieve 20 kW - I think that's what the video said.
@@JJ-zg1hh No, the video said you can chain batteries to get up to 20kWh of storage.
The infographic did seem to show more than one inverter - one of which had one attached battery modules and the other had a second battery module. I would ask them about your use case - do please let us know the answer?
The inverter is 5 kW? So, it won't support the house fully if the power goes out... a bit puny...
@@zapfanzapfan why? Who needs more than 5KW during a power cut?
I love the sound of most of this, apart from one element...
The point of a battery is to offset the cost of electricity (aside from the environmental reasons of course). If I've paid for a product to store renewable energy, that I've generated from solar panels I've also paid for, I'll be incredibly annoyed if someone via the internet begins using that energy to support a grid that is charging such a huge amount of money for the same energy out of nothing more than pure greed.
If I've paid to generate it and I've paid to store it, I'll be damned if I'm going to let someone else decide to give it away to 'help' a multi-billion pound company avoid sorting out their shortfalls.
If they're happy to buy it from me at the same price they're selling it, I'm 100% in 👍
So this is a K-Star solution with a Myenergy sticker?....oh oh oh
Looks like I made a wise decision to buy a Zappi charger, I can see myself buying a Libby in the near future. Supporting UK industry too bonus.
Hmm, no mention of household backup in case of grid failure. I hope that's in there.
Seeing Rob react at that picture in his most iconic role made me smile XD
Powerwall for the win. I'll get my coat....
13.5 Kw from Tesla in a much smaller form factor
yeah they need to beat the powerwall, so far Tesla still wins
We got wind of this 2 days ago. We're renovating our home next year and replacing entire heating system with IR radiators, mixergy, as many solar panels as we can get and batteries. We love myenergi products, have a zappi. We already planned to go with an Eddi possibly a harvi, but it was such a headache to figure out on inverters,batteries and other bits we needed. The minute we heard, we've put our names down to be first to get news about prices. We're on their emailing list. Looks like a well integrated piece of kit. As always it comes down to price.
Our local solar expert fitter is close to the company and he's waiting to be trained up about fitting them etc. And he's told us there are lots of people asking him if he could fit one already.
We're waiting on his feedback on his opinion of it. We're looking at getting the larger inverter, so if we need to we can add extra batteries in the future.
Presume the customers can sign up or sign off from the grid support features as these will shorten the life of the battery, so there has to be some cost benefit. What cell chemistry are they using would have been interesting