At Solar Power International (SPI) in Las Vegas this week, BYD announced the world’s first installation of its high-voltage B-Box energy storage system in Germany.
BYD’s B-Box is a modular energy storage system that allows customers to add battery modules to the B-Box unit as demands increase over time. This particular installation in Germany utilized 9 battery modules for a combined storage capacity of 11.5 kWh. If greater capacity is required, up to 5 B-Box systems can be connected in parallel.
BYD developed the B-Box to store energy generated from rooftop residential solar systems, which it can then meter back out to the house after the sun has set. It is intelligent enough to minimize the amount of solar energy sent to the grid or intelligently feeding in battery power to offset home usage that would have pushed the household into a higher tier of electricity usage, depending on the rate and fee structure of the local utility.
The BYD B-Box is available in Europe and Australia today, with a US launch expected later this year in Hawaii as well as select west and east coast markets with high electricity prices that make the B-Box a more lucrative financial proposition. The B-Box has evolved over the last few product offerings and is now a modular, stable, high-voltage unit that makes use of BYD’s long-lasting Lithium Ferro Phosphate (LiFePo4) batteries. These batteries have a slightly lower energy density than most EV batteries, resulting in a slightly larger size and weight per kWh (resulting in a slightly heavier product), but they are well suited for home energy storage since they reportedly have a much longer lifespan and far lower deterioration over their lifetimes.
The BYD B-Box unit as well as the BYD Mini ES home energy storage system are on display at the BYD booth at SPI in Las Vegas for US customers to get their hands on prior to the products coming to the US market later this year. For more information about B-Box, head over to the BYD B-Box product page for the full tech specs.
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