Solar batteries can easily be charged from a solar system or balcony power plant. But how do they release their stored charge? How do you know what power the devices in your home currently require? In the podcast with editors Marvin Stratmann, Sven Hansen and Christof Windeck from c’t and heise+, we explain what makes power delivery so problematic and we give lots of tips on how to get your batteries to achieve good feed-in behavior.
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In principle, there are four options: manual control using if-then rules or schedules, control via adapter plugs, control using a clamp meter in the distribution cabinet and control using a reading head on the electricity meter. All four have their own advantages and disadvantages, which we will look at – and we will explain why the official smart meters that you need for a dynamic electricity tariff are not suitable for battery control.
Christof and Marvin tried out reading heads: the interesting thing about the Fritz!Smart Energy 250 is its long-range radio connection via DECT to a Fritzbox, but Christof could only use the data within the Fritz world, not good for controlling a battery. Marvin therefore integrated his reading head – an IOmeter with a long-range 868 MHz radio – into the Home Assistant smart home platform, which gave him more options.
With clamp measuring devices, it is also important, especially in apartment buildings, how the measurement data gets to the battery. But the installation costs also play a role. We discuss various options and incorporate a lot of practical experience. The intermediate sockets, on the other hand, cost little and are usually used within radio range of the battery anyway. Their disadvantages lie elsewhere, above all they only measure the plugged-in devices and in principle cannot detect anything hard-wired such as ovens or lights.
Finally, Sven reports on his test of four current solar storage systems, models from Growatt, Marstek, Solakon and SunEnergyXT, each with a built-in inverter and capacities of two to five kilowatt hours.
Guests in the studio: Marvin Stratmann, Sven Hansen, Christof Windeck
Host: Jörg Wirtgen
Production: Tobias Reimer
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► The c’t articles on the topic on heise+ (paywall):
Smartly measure electricity consumption in the household and reduce costs
(XXL) storage for balcony power plants in the test
Reading electricity meters via Fritzbox: Fritz!Smart Energy 250 reading head in a practical test
IR reading heads in Home Assistant: Easily read out digital electricity meters
► auf Select (Paywall):
Energy perspective
The energy pump
Electric meter reading fritz
Energy monitor
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