Schneider Electric Solar announced InsightHome and InsightFacility, the newest additions to the Insight Energy Management ecosystem. Both InsightHome and InsightFacility are smart edge devices that connect customers’ Schneider Electric solar and storage systems to the Insight app. InsightHome targets the residential solar and storage market globally while InsightFacility is for large residential and commercial solar and storage systems.
Digital technologies have been transforming energy management. Homeowners want to take command of their energy decisions, such as which energy source they use at different times of the day. They are also looking for ways to optimize energy consumption based on time of use rates and demand charges.
Schneider Electric’s Insight helps homeowners make decisions on their energy footprint. Homeowners see their energy production and consumption from mobile or web apps and control their solar and storage systems.
Installers use Insight to manage their portfolio of installations. Installers can reduce site visits by 50% thanks to Insight’s powerful remote management features.
InsightHome is perfect for a single-family home with up to 26 kW of storage. Homeowners utilize the Insight app to monitor their home energy performance in real-time from anywhere and from any device. They can also see their money-savings and reduction in carbon emissions towards a more sustainable future. For installers, advanced features such as wireless connectivity and Li-ion battery integration make it easy to design and configure their customer’s solar and storage systems.
InsightFacility supports larger solar systems of up to 3 MW or storage systems of up to 50 kW. Portfolio management tools, customizable dashboards and remote control make managing a single commercial site or a large number of commercial sites easy. The cutting edge communication protocols allow for connectivity to utilities, third party inverters and advanced lithium storage technologies.
“Sustainability and energy resilience continue to be top of mind for many of our customers,” says Bernhard Kiechl, VP of Marketing, Research & Development, Schneider Electric Solar. “We’re excited about the evolution of Insight, bringing our customers peace of mind. Insight allows them to control their energy at their fingertips; it’s like having your own powerplant, knowing energy management is in place.”
Both InsightHome and InsightFacility are compatible with Schneider Electric’s hybrid solar and storage offerings, including the XW and SW lines of storage inverters, the MPPT solar charge controllers and the accessories.
News item from Schneider Electric
I can see how grid edge technology with ‘price signals’ could be used to make a bi-directional grid to “right price” energy services and possibly make money off of one’s home BTM system. At this time the IOU utility games seem to be price in blocks of electricity use and as more kWh are used, tier the electric rate up in cost until one hits the top tier. After hours when solar PV is not generating good usable power, then the utility goes into TOU rate spiking from around 4 PM to 9 PM every day. With the programmable functions in a smart ESS one can pretty much program a time to start using battery to generate power to cover these electricity price spiking rate periods. Careful analysis of one’s particular energy use habits could be monitored and turned into graphs to show when and how energy was used during the day. With energy storage being modular, IE) Simpli-phi comes in 3.8kWh units that can be stacked. IF your 3.8kWh unit is being cycled too much in a 24 hr. period, add another 3.8kWh energy storage block and see how 7.6 kWh of available energy storage works. Data analytics allow careful operation of resources and allows one to fit the system to the need keeping costs down.