More and more homeowners want to use their own solar energy, even for electric mobility or for heating. What is the task of the energy management system?
Kathrin Rust: The energy management system is one of the most important component in the household. We often say that it's a little bit like a conductor of an orchestra. If the musicians just play what they want, it will never work. It is the conductor who says who has to play and what. It is similar in energy management. The control device decides which consumer gets the energy because sun is shining. Or because the tariff for grid supply is very cheap at the moment. The energy management system does that. It just makes a conductor and an orchestra the whole things in the household.
Subscribe to pv Europe newsletter now!
What needs to be included in an energy management system?
It doesn't have to be an independent system. It has to be free. It has to involve a lot of devices from many manufacturers. It has to be flexible for future needs because most of private households start with PV, then go to electromobility, then perhaps they get a heat pump, something like that. It's over years. Step by step, they buy something. If you have a closed system, you always have to look, whether it still fits the system? We have to have an open system, an open energy management system with a lot of devices. I talk about more than 100 devices you need that you really can fill up the whole market and make your customer happy.
More about new inverters and energy management systems
Which options has the craftsman when he has an energy management system in his portfolio?
If you want to have a good fit by the customers, you have to have one system, may be, two. The second point in our system is, that you can offer your marketing and logo inside. If If you have a new system, you go to your neighbor and say, hey, look, I have a new system. Look, I can optimize everything and everything is working. Then that's at the good point if you have that because you have one more touch point to your customer and one more touch point to your next customer.
Watch the full interview on YouTube
What is the focus of Solar Manager developing their own energy management system?
It's really important that it's an open system, that you have a lot of devices in it. Solar Manager have more than 400 devices in it. But we don't want to have only devices put in our system. We want to make it really intelligent. One example, we have more than 40 heat pumps included, not only by SG-ready, we have put it really bidirectional. We really talk with the heat pump. We can make it heat up or slow it down. That's something the customer can gain more than €300 per year, get a less off that.
It sounds like a huge certification effort that you have to manage?
Yes, we have really good people working in our company. They really do a good job. We have a good platform, and it's really easy for us to do that.
More innovation on video – watch PV Guided Tours!
How can the craftsmen work together with you? What is your distribution strategy?
You can't buy it by yourself. You just have to go to your favorite partner where you buy other components and parts for your solar business. You can buy our hardware there. Then you can get the installer account at our system where you get the free monitoring. You can see all your parts, all your customers, you can see everything has worked. The customer has only paid for the hardware, so you can give it through to him. Then the customer has also pay a little fee per year to us.
As I understand, there are no costs für the installers?
The installer have nothing to do with payment, something like that. Just do normally your job, but get support for that, get a good thing for that, for the monitoring, for the customer relationship. If the installer needs some help, we offer professional support. If you have the first installation you can call and we make it together with you. Also we have a strong knowledge base where you can everything see, how it works, how it can be installed.
Interview by Sven Ullrich
