During Intersolar South America, Sec Power presented its innovative storage calculator, called Bee. The tool allows for precise battery sizing for a variety of residential and C&I (commercial and industrial) applications, including backup, load shifting, peak shaving and flow reversal, serving both low and medium voltage systems.
Among the advantages of the solution, which is available free of charge on the company's website and from partner distributors, is the significant reduction in sizing time. “Before, the integrator took about an hour to size a system, now the process takes less than five minutes (a reduction of about 90%)”.
“I recently ran a simulation for a residential system and it took me less than two minutes to complete the sizing. All I needed was the customer’s energy bill to identify consumption and define the necessary autonomy,” explained Márcia Silva, Account Manager at Sec Power.
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According to her, in the tool it is possible to find these consumption and autonomy fields – which, in fact, the company suggests that the user set three hours of autonomy to size the batteries.
“We suggest not setting it for more than six hours, because if you do, it often makes the project unfeasible. Except, of course, in cases where the client is in an isolated region, where they really depend on a larger, more robust battery bank, in which case we recommend that they set it for a longer range,” he said.
“So, you will enter information about how much you are consuming during peak hours and what the autonomy is, which is three hours. The calculator is already considering the days that are weekdays, because peak hours are not charged on the weekend,” reported Márcia.
Using this information, Bee makes an exact calculation of how many batteries the consumer needs to meet their demand. “And the best part is that we don’t provide the brand, but we include the inverter power suggested for this system,” he added.
Tool development
In total, Bee Sec Power took about nine months to develop. “When we decided to invest in it, our main goal was to streamline the integration process, to make life easier for the end user and to support distributors.”
“Traveling around Brazil, talking to integrators and distributors, I understood that the main difficulty, what was separating the integrator from the hybrid system with battery, was sizing. So, how do I size the batteries? How many batteries do I use? With that, we decided to develop the first tool in Brazil that does sizing for all applications”, highlighted the Account Manager.
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According to Márcia Silva, the tool was created for educational purposes and is intended to help the user to size an energy storage system, which should not, for all intents and purposes, require the assistance of a qualified professional.
It is recommended that the user seeks the assistance of a specialist to assess the feasibility of the sizing to ensure that specific needs are adequately met. “Ideally, the consumer should always consult and check with the engineering department to see if the calculation is actually correct. After all, it is always important to have a check.”
“Solution is intuitive and easy to use”
Eliston Boff, Support Analyst at Bold Energy, is one of Sec Power's customers who is already using Bee. For him, storage is a new market for integrators, which raises many questions, especially about the sizing and ideal quantity of batteries to be used.
“In my view, the tool is quite intuitive, with simple and objective questions, allowing anyone to use it, whether they are part of the engineering team, designers, technicians, sales staff, salespeople or even the end customer,” he commented.
Furthermore, Boff emphasized that the solution provides a specific battery model for each modality, as well as compensating for peak and off-peak consumption. “It also includes the inverter power, which is essential. Therefore, it is a very easy, fast and complete sizing, with all the information we need”, he concluded.
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