Tag Archives: Net metering

Vestwoods Power: Tesla Powerwall KILLER?

I have reviewed some power stations in the past few months, but the VESTWOODS Power I’m going to present today seems to have unique highlights that make it different from the rest. And today they invited me to their lab to check out everything.

So, what’s special about it? Let’s take a closer look! Starting with the unboxing. We have a bag of accessories that you need to get this power station to work and the main VESTWOODS Power unit. Definitely included for the official unit will be some paperwork like a manual or warranty card.

Moving on to the design, here are all the ports on the machine. We have two communication ports, an ON/OFF switch, and two sets of positive and negative ports. Moving down are the indicators. Turning to the back, we have the bracket so you can mount the machine to your wall if needed.

While today in the lab, we are not going to mount it on a wall. We’ll just put it on the floor to test. But before the test, let me walk you through the key specs first. The one we were testing was the VE51100W model with a 5.12KWh capacity, they have a larger version boasting a capacity of 14.33 kWh. The cost that comes with such an enormous capacity of course is the weight. The weight of the two is 54kg and 128.5kg respectively, this is definitely not something you can easily move around.

But we can see the logic here, they are designed to let you mount on a wall or put in a corner instead of moving it around. It has more than 6000 cycles and was designed to use for more than 15 years.

For others, you can check out on the screen. To use the VESTWOODS Power, you have to connect it to a solar inverter, VESTWOODS also sells that as well. We use the cables that come with the box to connect the positive, negative port, and the Communication cable with the solar inverter, and then press the ON/OFF switch to turn it on.

As we can see, the indicator will light up as well. Now moving to the max loading power test. Of course, the max loading power relates to the solar inverter as well. I’m just so glad that it handles those high-power electrical appliances without a hiccup.

The next test is the charging and discharging speed. We used the RePower, a professional battery test machine to test that, as you can see it reached almost 100amp for charging, which means, theoretically, you could fully charge this 5.12KWh capacity in just one hour because the VESTWOODS battery backup we were testing came with 51.2 nominal voltage. That’s fast compared to some of the big players on the market. And here is the discharging.

Just like you would expect, the VESTWOODS Power offers an App. Here on the home page, you can clearly see the status of it. How much power you get from the solar panel or the grid and the remaining capacity and consumption of the battery.

You can check your production power and consumption each day. You can view more from the Statistics, so you will know your total production, total grid Feed-in, etc. Also, you can check more data about your Inverter.

Alright, that’s a very simple and first look at the VESTWOODS Power. Compared to the “Portable” Power Stations I’ve reviewed before, the advantages are obvious, it offers a massive capacity that lasts for days that other normal ones couldn’t even imagine.

It integrates with your family grid power system seamlessly even when power outages occur, your power still stays on. And it stores solar energy. This is great as you probably live in an area with time-of-use charges, like the sample plan in California, 33 cents from 8 am to 4 pm and then 53 cents from 4 pm to 9 pm, that’s a much higher rate.

All solar generation happens during the day so if you are not home and you are not consuming that power you could store it in your battery and use it when the peak charges are present. But like all such battery backups, they are not cheap, definitely more expensive than let’s say, a whole home generator.

Usually, the price lies between $15,000 to $20,000 for a 10 – 15 kWh backup. Gladly, if we compared to other big brands, VESTWOODS still has the best price per Wh. Thus reliability and safety are the two most important factors when buying such battery backups.

The VESTWOODS adopts a new Lithium Iron Phosphate battery technology, which has a higher resistance to thermal runaway, and doesn’t set on fire or explode under pressure so they are safe and reliable, with 6,000 cycles and 10 years of warranty, that could definitely earn back all you invest for such a product.

So if you experience power outages often for an extended period of time and you want to be able to stay warm or cold, or for those areas with extreme weather events that are without power for weeks that could lead to severe damage, then this VESTWOODS is more of a convenience reason to buy and sometimes even a necessity, what do you think?

Source : Youtube

What is Virtual Net Metering for Solar Energy?

Welcome to The Solar Energy Channel where you’ll get an honest inside look at all things solar. In this video, we’re going to talk about virtual net metering for solar energy or otherwise known as meter aggregation.

I’m Warren. – And I’m Larry, and don’t forget to like and subscribe so that you’ll receive notifications for future videos, just like this. – So Larry, why don’t you tell us what is virtual net metering or meter aggregation? – Meter aggregation is a really neat concept, which allows you to build one system tied into one meter and then use the overproduction from that one system to virtually supply kilowatt hours to another meter.

And the benefit of that or an ideal case study use case for that would be a farm or a business that has a perfect location for solar, but they have multiple meters and they don’t want to have to trench or try and connect that solar array to multiple different meters.

That’s correct, so now instead of building multiple systems which take multiple designs and multiple installations, you can now do one big system on one meter and virtually aggregate that power to all the other meters.

And it also saves money on fees associated with each of those meters as well. – Correct. – So not everybody qualifies for meter aggregation in states it’s a little different in each state and it’s also a little different between each utility.

So maybe why don’t you give us an example Larry of Pennsylvania and how meter aggregation is handled in Pennsylvania. – So here in Pennsylvania, meter aggregation is allowed. However, there’s a requirement that all your meter that you’re aggregating to are in the same utility and also that they’re all within two miles of the host meter or the meter where you’re tying your system into.

In addition to that different utilities do handle the crediting of kilowatt hours a little bit differently, – But anybody can qualify if they meet those qualifications. – Correct. – And so that’s a little different Larry compared to Maryland.

For example in Maryland, you have to be a farmer or nonprofit or a government entity in order to take advantage of virtual net metering. – Yeah that’s great Warren, and so in summary, virtual meter aggregation is a great tool if you have multiple meters and wanna save costs by installing just one system.

However the key is to check with your installer to make sure that your local utility and your state allow you to virtually meter aggregate in your area. – Thanks for watching. If you found this content helpful, don’t forget to like the video and subscribe to our channel for future releases

Source : Youtube