Located on the east side of the island of Hawaii, Pepeekeo is home to a flourishing cacao farm that has recently gone completely off-grid with the help of SimpliPhi batteries. Installed by local Hawaiian off-grid specialist Solar Saint, the system has proven to be incredibly efficient.

It starts with 30 330W solar panels that provide 9.9kW of power. These are controlled by three FlexMax 80s that are then fed into an Outback Radian 8048 *kW Inverter. Excess energy charges three SimpliPhi Power PHI 3.4 batteries that store a total of 10.2kWh at 201 amp hours.

The number of devices and infrastructure that is served by the system is considerable. It includes all cacao processing operations, including grinders, lighting, refrigeration, and communications, a commercial grade kitchen, a Polaris ATV EV and a Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid.

Impressive? Absolutely. But there’s more to it than that. According to Casey of Solar Saint there were four main criteria that made them choose SimpliPhi Power as their go-to energy storage solution: depth of discharge, rapid charging time, energy density and scalability. These were crucial to get the level of performance they were hoping for. The fast charge time means that by approximately 10AM the batteries are fully charged and the full power of the PV array is already taking over to power loads. The SimpliPhi Power batteries maintain operations well into the night. Even though the site is equipped with a generator with an auto start, so far the generator has not operated once. A sure sign that this is a well-designed and executed project, paired with industry leading technology. In the words of Casey, “SimpliPhi batteries are hands down amazing.”

The content & opinions in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of AgriTechTomorrow

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