The rapidly growing market of EVs must be supported by charging infrastructure in public and residential settings in order to fully embrace the transition to fully renewable electric vehicle charging in line with ambitious climate goals.
Driven by the company’s vision of “Clean power for all” and recognizing the megatrend of inte-gration of renewable energy, electric mobility and electrification, Sungrow took the first steps of developing its very own charger products already back in 2017.
Last year during Intersolar 2022 Sungrow announced the big news of introducing a 11kW AC Charger to the European market. It’s available in combination with the 3-phase Hybrid and the Battery of Sungrow or as standalone product.
Since end of 2022 the product is available in the market and first installations took place.
Here, Sungrow’s Product Manager for the new AC Charger, Tobias Zimmermann, breaks down how the 3-phase Solution with the new EV Charger is providing an all-in-one residential clean energy solution to maximise self-consumption and help save energy costs.
What may PV installers expect from the system?
“There are essentially three parts to the system, the EV Charger, the 3-phase Hybrid inverter and the Battery. When these three components are combined, customers can fully embrace the sys-tem as a complete smart EV charging solution for their homes and benefit from full renewables integration. We are seeing greater adoption of EVs across several key markets in Europe, in line with green transport and emission reductions goals, which is a positive trend. However, this is only part of the solution. In order to fully benefit from the transition to EVs, the charge input needs to be supplied by renewables too. Battery storage is quickly gaining in popularity, and of course, solar and storage systems like the 3-phase Hybrid, Battery and EV Charger are also at-tractive to customers for the savings on high retail power costs. It guarantees low cost, clean power with the ability to increase with customer’s electricity needs.
Like all Sungrow products, the 3-phase Solution and EV Charger is designed to be beyond easy, beyond effortless and beyond convenient. For installers, this means they have the assurance of working with a single manufacturer, offering one central point of contact for all inquiries for the whole system - including warranty and servicing. The whole Solution is designed for effortless set up, with easy, simple installation that can be carried out by one person, and remote commis-sioning for the full system in just a few minutes. Another feature across Sungrow’s product port-folio that is included with the 3-phase Solution is our digital monitoring platform, iSolarCloud.
All three devices, the 3-phase Hybrid, the Battery and the EV Charger, are accessible within iSo-larCloud. This means that our customers have the advantage of being able to see how much energy they are producing with their PV plant, how much energy is being stored in their battery and furthermore they can see all the details about the charging process of his E-Vehicle, such as exactly how much PV energy is being used to charge the car.”
What are some of the key features of the AC Charger?
“The EV charger is Sungrow’s solution for homeowners, delivering simple, user-friendly and effi-cient charging. In terms of product specifications, the AC011E-01 is an 11kW AC charger suitable for 50/60 Hz frequency grid integration. Due to the IP65 approval, the AC-Charger perfectly fits to nearly every installation scenario of the customer needs. The whole system supports four dif-ferent charging modes, that increase the efficiency of the overall system and covers the daily charging requirements of the end-customer.”
How does the AC Charger interact with the iSolarCloud platform?
“We aim to give our customers transparency around their product performance, usage, and monitoring. That’s why our digital monitoring service, iSolarCloud, is fully integrated with all de-vices of the installation to offer full control over all components: 3-phase Hybrid, Battery, and EV Charger.
The communication device WiNet-S, which is connected to the 3-phase Hybrid, sends data to iSolarCloud every 10 seconds. Therefore, the customer may check in near real time energy flow and self-consumption, which puts them totally in control of their renewable energy assets.”
Can the AC Charger be used as a standalone product?
“Yes, the AC Charger can be used as a standalone product. We even have our own App, iEner-gyCharge, available to help make the usage and operation of the product simple and stream-lined for customers. It also has a power limitation function which will curb the amount of energy the charger will use to save on power consumption.
Our products are designed to grow with our customer’s needs. The modularity of the systems means that Sungrow’s Hybrid and Battery can be added at any time, to give them the full ben-efits of renewable energy integration.”
What are some important considerations before investing in a Sungrow system?
“The EV revolution has arrived and one major side effect of this is that the market is growing. It’s not just customer demand that is swelling. More manufactures and suppliers are entering the PV and EV mobility market too. There are various new and inexperienced market entrants providing equipment now. A key consideration that customers need to take into account before making a purchase, is the reliability of the supplier and manufacturer. Customers need to have the reassurance that they are contracting with a bankable provider that has a wealth of experience in overcoming the complex challenges that the market brings. As an industry-lead-ing provider, Sungrow has more than 25 years’ experience in the solar sector with a broad range of products and multi-gigawatt hour global deployments in energy storage systems. This not only means that Sungrow has a proven track record of successful product pipelines, but that the company has built up strong and long-lasting relationships with trusted suppliers. This is one of the true benefits of choosing Sungrow’s products. Excellent products combined with quality cus-tomer service.”
You’re interest in more information?
“I highly recommend to check out our new Sungrow AC Charging Guide. Besides interesting market insights, the document offers exclusive tips and tricks for installing the new AC Charger from Sungrow. You may download the document here.
