Pay less for power and use more of the sun’s energy with a sonnenBatterie hybrid 9.53 solar battery.
Manufactured by German battery experts, sonnen’s high-tech, smart battery lets you monitor and intelligently control your energy usage to save even more money.
The quick answer? You’ll save money and the environment by installing a sonnenBatterie hybrid 9.53. That’s because a sonnen solar battery:
The sonnenBatterie 9.53 hybrid starts at 2.5kWh for $8,700. However, most customers start on either a 7.5kWh solar battery from $12,000, or 10kWh from $14,000.
Not sure what you need? Don’t worry, we’ll help you figure out the best sonnen solar battery size for your household’s current usage. Get a quote now (and when you do), ask us about our $500 discount if you combine your solar battery with solar panels!)
Yes. Installation timeframes depend on where you live, but expect it to take between 2-6 weeks to add a battery to your existing system.
A sonnen warranty lasts for 10 years or 10,000 cycles (whichever comes first), and the batteries have an expected lifetime of around 20 years.
sonnenFlat is your opportunity to pay $0 in electricity bills. It’s a complete energy package from sonnen that gives you free electricity in exchange for being part of the sonnen solar battery network, and a low monthly fee.
The idea behind this is that sometimes, the demand for grid power is high or changes rapidly. When this happens, the network of connected sonnen batteries join together to form an energy generator. It’s much like the normal electricity grid, except that it exclusively uses solar power instead of non-renewable energy sources.
Participating in this program helps to smooth out fluctuations in the power grid and keep the network stable. And in return, you get the opportunity for $0 electricity bills.
You need to install the sonnenBatterie 9.53 hybrid solar battery somewhere indoors, usually in a garage or utility room. The installation space will need to meet some specifications, and we’ll talk you through these when you request a quote.
The right sized sonnenBatterie for your household depends on three factors:
– your household usage
– the size of your solar power system
– your energy-saving goals.
You can keep adding sonnen solar batteries together to reach any capacity. However, the size that works for most typical Australian households is either a 7.5kWh or 10kWh solar battery. At this size, your solar battery will charge fully during the day, and then provide enough power to last your household throughout the night. Ask us for a quote tailored to your needs.
Do I need to already have solar panels to get a sonnenBatterie?
No – sonnen solar batteries are very flexible. You can install a full solar power system – solar panels and a sonnen solar battery – at the same time, or retrofit a sonnen to your existing solar system. In fact, if you order solar panels and a sonnen solar battery from us in one installation, you’ll enjoy a $500 discount.
Another thing to consider is that the sonnenBatterie 9.53 hybrid has an internal inverter. This means that when you install solar panels and the sonnen solar battery at the same time, you don’t need to buy an additional inverter. If you were just installing solar panels, you’d need a separate inverter.
So there are two clear benefits to doing it all at the same time.
Imagine a world with no power bills… it’s closer than you think! In an Australian first, sonnen now provides free electricity in exchange for access to your sonnen solar battery and a low monthly rate.
If you sign up to the sonnenFlat program (and why wouldn’t you?), sonnen will guarantee you a fixed amount of free electricity each day. They’ll determine the amount based on your solar system size and sonnen battery capacity.
To jump on board, you just need to agree to become part of the sonnen solar battery network. Think of this as joining a private mini-grid, but one that provides power exclusively from a 100% renewable, environmentally friendly source.
Once your battery is fully charged, any excess power you generate goes to someone else on the network who can use it. And when there’s a lot of demand on the main grid, the network of connected sonnenBatteries steps in – keeping everything stable.
All that AND a chance for $0 electricity bills. That’s Aussie innovation at its finest!
The sonnenBatterie hybrid 9.53 has an expected design life of 20 years with a warranty of 10 years or 10,000 cycles, whichever comes first.
This means you’d have to fully charge and fully discharge your battery 2.7 times every day within those 10 years before your total battery storage capacity started to degrade.
That’s huge for battery ROI. Most Australian households will only cycle their battery once per day, so your sonnenBatterie might last you well beyond the flat 10-year warranty that most other solar battery brands offer.
Z-Wave Power Adapters are your sonnen solar battery system’s secret weapon. Think of them as ‘smart plugs’ that could save you up to 22-32c per kWh you use.
Here’s how: some appliances in your home are particularly power-hungry. We’re talking devices like your reverse cycle air conditioning, dishwasher, pool pump, washing machine and dryer. Plugging these appliances into a Z-Wave Power Adapter lets you intelligently manage both:
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For example, you can set them up to only turn on when your solar panels are generating too much power. That way, instead of selling excess electricity back to the grid at a low feed-in tariff rate, you can use all that power your panels are generating. Only when you need extra power beyond that will the appliance switch to using your battery.
The result: you get to use more of the power you generate – and that can create quite a saving. Power prices and feed-in tariffs vary from state to state. However, it’s not unusual to have to buy power at around 28-38c per kWh, and only be able to sell it at around 6c per kWh. That means every unit of excess power you sell to the grid and later have to buy back will cost you 22-32c per kWh.
It’s like your Z-Wave smart plugs are directing a dance between your appliances, your solar panels, your battery and the grid, to save you the most money possible. (Of course, if you prefer more control over when your devices turn on or off, you can manage them manually too. Just use the sonnen app for smartphones and tablets, or the sonnen website portal.)
We sure can! We’ll always offer these to any customer who’s thinking about a sonnen battery. They’re a fantastic way to maximise your savings and keep you independent from grid power.
Absolutely. You can manually turn on or off any appliances you’ve connected to your Z-Wave power adapters, no matter how charged your sonnen battery is. You’re always in control through the sonnen smartphone or tablet app, or via the monitoring website, sonnenPortal.
You can configure the rules you want to set easily through the online monitoring website, sonnenPortal. For example, you might schedule:
If you really wanted to, you could have up to 232 appliances connected to your Z-Wave Power Adapters. Realistically though, you’d probably only want to use them on the devices we mentioned above that drain a lot of power.
If you’re like most people, one of your main goals in going solar is to save on your power bills. The problem is that without a battery, you can only use solar power while it’s being generated. And your system will naturally generate most of its electricity during the day, when the sun’s at its peak.
Frustratingly, that’s likely to be exactly when you’re at work, unable to use most of that solar power you’re generating.
Yes, the electricity will keep your fridge, hot water tank and clocks running during the day… But then, during the evenings, when you actually NEED the lion’s share of your power to switch on the lights, heat up the stove or power the TV? There’s no longer any sunlight – so you have to start drawing the electricity you need from the grid.
With a solar battery though, you can store the excess power you generate during the day to use later, when electricity is most expensive. This allows you to significantly cut your electricity bills.
Not sure how much solar battery storage your household really needs? Or perhaps you know, but it’s just a bit beyond your budget right now? Either way, sonnen solar batteries have you covered.
With a sonnenBatterie, you can start small and then add extra battery storage on as your needs grow. You can start as small as 2.5kWh and increase in steps of 2.5kWh all the way up to 15kWh (more than enough for most households) in one cabinet. Or, if you’re looking for a sustainable way to power your small-to-medium-sized business, you could set up multiple 16kWh units in parallel.
And you can choose between three different cabinet sizes to ‘keep your options open’ when it comes to easily adding extra batteries later if you need them.
Sick of blackouts spoiling your food and forcing you to miss the live broadcast of the big game? Never be caught without power when you need it again!
You can install your sonnenBatterie hybrid 9.53 with an optional back-up panel that automatically starts powering your home again just 2 seconds after your electricity goes out.
Do you think the overarching goal for most consumers is to achieve a zero dollar energy bill and do you think this will become the norm going forward?
What we see as the overarching motive is that people are frustrated with utilities, they are frustrated with price policies, they are frustrated with the politics, so they want to be independent, so the question is what does independence mean? Obviously zero electricity is something very catchy but the real motive for a lot of our customers is they want to reach real independence, they don’t necessarily mind the investment up front, the issue is long term independence from utilities and politics. This is the main driver for the USA, for Germany and also Australia, so this is why zero electricity is always nice to have and is very catchy and allows us to have aggressive marketing, but the real issue is people are sick and tired of being exposed to price policies that they have not participated in, that they are not responsible for and neither the politicians nor the big companies take care of their electricity bills, so we offer them true independence by not only giving them hardware where you have 70 – 80% of sufficiency , but we connect them and link them together , and we see this is the true emotional desire of our customers besides the economic benefit so we truly believe those prosumer based utilities will be the next big thing when it comes to catering to the need and motive of being energy independent. So being energy independent is more important in our perspective than saving money, however it still allows us to drop their electricity bill to $0.
Do you see a transition of power away from the electricity companies and retailers back into the pocket of consumers?
Absolutely, and an example from Germany I just mentioned 80% of electricity generated on the first of May has been generated from renewable sources and if you look at the sources, they are from a combined end phase of 2.2 million assets and they are owned by private citizens, 95% of them are owned by citizens. If you look at the conventionalists in Germany we had 100 active power plants active from the first of May, they are owned by the big utilities. So if you look at the pure facts of who owns those assets, will have the lowest electricity price moving forward, and you see the shift and new asset owners are citizens and not companies. So we will work towards connecting those assets.
What do you think is the impact on a property value of a home that has an energy storage solution? Does having a solar battery make a house more attractive for resale and how are you future proofing home energy solutions in doing so?
In Germany, one of the main reasons or one of the big characteristics we see with big real estate development companies looking for Green technologies because they always on the market for not only wanting an image of Green lifestyle but they also want to break down costs over ten years to zero which is a great marketing tool and is increasing the value of their real-estate asset, so yes this is absolute one of the main drivers.
How does sonnen Flat insulate customers from rising electricity and supply charges and risk in this area, and what you mentioned previously is there is always political and electrical instability, one of the biggest concerns we are finding consumers have with the standard battery is ‘ I can offset the electricity cost but I can’t offset the supply charge cost’, so how is the sonnen flat different there?
Its different in the way we become the utility and are guaranteeing to the end customer the outcome of zero electricity bills. Obviously sonnen as a, lets say a peer to peer community, as the utility will have the risk, the risk is on the other side of the country an income generated from grid stabilisatiom but also for wholesale which is offsetting the cost that we have to make sure our customers have zero electricity bill, but if you look at the total risk in Australia and Germany you’ll see that the storage units are opening up not only grid stabilisation model, frequency regulation model and wholesale shift, where we can actually make electricity accessible and very cheap, for example low tariff time where you start sucking in electricity, but you’re right, we still have a company will carry the right of the supply pricing.
What is your take on the current grid crisis, the instability crisis that we have across Australia with black outs and issues with the national electricity market?
Our take is, due to the fact that all the national gas of Australia is not available for the market itself, you guys are dependant on coal and solar so there is a structural deficit when it comes to base loads, so there is an increase in our perspective when it comes to implementing storage large scale, and also from our perspective, it need to be consistent with assets that are optimising the grid. So it’s necessary from our perspective that Australia not only has a large roll out of assets, but those assets must be grid optimised so they must be capable of allowing grid operators to stabilise of the grid when needed and this always is for money, it will not be for free for sure, but we believe it will only be a sustainable solution when the grid is optimised, otherwise, all you have is thousands and thousands of islands that your building that cannot provide a full solution to the grid issue that Australia has.
We have already seen a huge demand for back up power in line with grid instability and already well publicised in the media, how well do you think this trend will continue moving forward?
We believe the demand will continue to increase as there is so much frustration also just the situation of being at home, and not having refrigeration, not having air conditioning so we believe this will be the main driver for our customers in Australia. We have also just announced an additional retrofit back up option for Australia so we believe this will be, and will remain one of the key ingredients to remain successful in solar storage.
How does the concept of electricity sharing and building a virtual power plant work in reality?
In reality what we do in Germany is quite simple. We have a almost 2 million solar power plants that are all owned by private citizens at the moment they are feeding them to the grid and they get a subsidy from the government per kilowatt hour. What we do in the next year is we already now the subsidy is fading so for customers will have to look for that need electricity and there will be no other subsidy to pay for the power they are feeding into the grid at any moment.
In 10 years, what do you think the house of the future will look like?
We believe in ten years all newly built homes in Australia and Germany will be fully electrified when it comes to heating, when it comes to power generation and when it comes to driving a car, so exactly what you’re describing, we see the trend is strong in US, Germany and in Australia that people are moving away from Gas and Oil in their homes, and towards and using clean, smart and electric heating with heat pumps so we believe all these sources such as transportation, heat electrification and will be powered by solar in ten years .
What is sonnen Flat?
sonnen Flat guarantees our customers a zero electricity bill if they allow us to use their storage device to partake in the wholesale market and frequency regulation, the frequency stabilisation market.
What benefits are there for your battery over more common batteries on the market that allow it to be cycled more times without degradation rate that makes the sonnen Flat more practical that you can use the battery over and over again?
Yes, this is exactly the point. If you were to have a conventional battery system you would probably have a cycle life of about 2800 cycles maximum over ten years. This would not allow you to partake in any program where your battery is used next to home consumption for grid stabilisation or wholesale. We are together with Sony guaranteeing 10000 cycles per kilowatt hour of our lithium-iron-phosphate battery technology, plus our battery technology that is allowing us to have extra to use the battery for extra services when it’s not in use for your own private consumption, which allows you to use these services without downside. So we can actually link our customers units, use them while they are not being used and there will be no disadvantage for our customers. I think this is key aspect.
So you will reward your customers for using their battery more, you’re that confident in the performance of the battery?
Yes, absolutely, there is no risk attached for the customer. He has a guarantee of ten years and 10,000 cycles and he’s having a guarantee for his price.
These costs are based on the SA Power network in Adelaide but prices may vary depending on your circumstances. This comparison assumes a general energy usage of 4000kWh/year for a residential customer on Energy Locals Time of Use Tariff – (TOU – Peak, Off-Peak & Solar Sponge).
The reference price is set by the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) for a financial year in relation to electricity supply to residential customers in the distribution region and is based on an assumed annual usage amount. Any difference between the reference price and the unconditional price of a plan is expressed as a percentage more or less than the reference price. The terms of any conditional discounts are shown, along with any further difference between the reference price and the discount applied if a condition is met, expressed as a percentage more or less than the reference price.
