The Australian home battery outfit whose customers include federal energy minister Chris Bowen has a new all-in-one residential solution in the works that will combine solar, storage and bidirectional electric vehicle (EV) charging, in a bid to streamline distributed energy with electric mobility.
The new product, billed as the world’s first residential “microgrid-in-a-box” (MIB), is the result of a partnership between Australian battery maker RedEarth, China’s Nebula Electronics and Germany’s ambibox.
RedEarth says the “technical alliance” will leverage each party’s core competencies in technology innovation, industrial manufacturing and localised market operations to deliver a “scalable and affordable energy management and distribution system.”
RedEarth CEO Marc Sheldon says the main thing to note about the new battery is that “it’s not just a battery,” but rather “a combination of pretty much everything” needed to run an efficient electric home and car.
“We’ll take the solar inverter, we’ll take the hybrid inverter, we’ll take the [bi-directional] EV charger and a few other things and we’ll put it all into one system, which is modular and software driven.”
Brisbane-based RedEarth Energy Storage, best known for its off-grid energy storage solutions, hit the residential radar in Australia in 2021, when its Troppo product became the first fully Australian designed and assembled home batteries to get Clean Energy Council approval.
Last year, minister Bowen revealed that he had bought a Troppo battery to support his home solar system after a visit to the company’s stand at the 2023 Smart Energy Conference & Exhibition.
“I checked out their products closely,” Bowen told RenewEconomy at the time. ”And as a direct result of that visit, I now have one helping power our house and supporting the grid very efficiently.”
He may soon wish to upgrade. RedEarth says real-world testing of the new MIB shows it can reduce overall energy costs for users by up to 60 per cent, with the potential to also generate revenue for homeowners through electricity market services.
Further, the bundling of MIB’s technological capabilities work to massively reduce the cost compared to if they were bought and installed separately.
“We haven’t yet released our pricing, we will very shortly,” Sheldon tells One Step Off The Grid. “But for the separate systems, you put them all together, let’s say a hybrid converter and a bidirectional charger and a solar system, you’ll be saving with the new (MIB) system more than 40%.”
The new all-in-one offering from RedEarth follows in the wake of the enormously popular SigenStor – a a “five-in-one” battery that integrates solar, storage, bi-directional electric vehicle charging and an AI-based energy management system.
The SigenStor, by China-based Sigenergy, has been an overnight success in Australia, grabbing top spot for market share in March – 17.4 per cent of all battery systems proposed, sold and installed for the month – after making its debut less than two years ago.
It’s also being rated highly by solar industry insiders, topping the votes in SolarQuotes’ latest annual Best Home Batteries survey – which asks installers: If installing a system on your own house today, what brand’s batteries would you use?.
Sheldon says the key differentiator between the MIB and the SigenStor is that RedEarth’s feature sets are enabled using software and not by adding different bits of hardware.
“Our product is an all-in-one system where feature sets are actually enabled using software, so you don’t need to add additional modules to it.
It’s also stackable with existing solar systems and inverters, offering the potential to size-up the existing PV and add EV charging to the mix. And it can be used in a number of different variations, including as an EV charger only, or as a standalone battery and EV charger, without rooftop solar.
“That’s a critical component,” Sheldon says. “You can use it as a solar inverter. You can use it as a battery; inverter with a battery. You can use it as a charger, or you can use it in any one of those three combinations.
“And … our system will be fully 4777 certified, so you can use it purely as a standalone EV charger.
“So you might want to install our system and just use that as … a solar inverter to begin with. And then, tomorrow, hey, okay, I’ve bought an EV, now I want a bi-directional charger in here.
“What do you do? You buy a cable from us, literally, that’s all you do. And then you buy a software license from us, and we enable the system over the air. And that’s it.
“And that cable doesn’t need an electrician to install… It’ll actually come with a quick connect. And the only thing you need to be able to do is screw a holder into the wall.”
Manfred Przybilla, CEO of ambibox, says his company has been working on the Microgrid-in-Box for almost a decade and, with the advancement in vehicle to home and grid capabilities in EVs, is now ready to hit the market.
“We’ve demonstrated our experience in the field with the launch of over 200 commercial V2G pilot projects in Sweden, validating the system’s reliability under demanding conditions,” he said.
Sheldon adds that one of the key reasons that the MIB project partners are interested in working with RedEarth and in the Australian market is because it’s between three to five years ahead of the rest of the world on the integration of distributed energy.
“This is a funny discussion that I keep on having with Manfred… He keeps on sending me releases coming out in Germany, where people are going, ‘ah, we need to address this issue of over voltage on the distribution grid.’
“And we sit there and go, ‘Really, this is an issue for you now?! …It’s been a problem for us for the last six or eight years!’
“We have found measures to deal with [the integration of consumer energy resources] that now are becoming very, very interesting for Europe, very interesting for China and other places as well,” Sheldon says.
“There’s a lot of know how that we can bring to them.”
RedEarth says the first batch of jointly developed MIB products is expected to enter the markets of China, Europe and Australia/New Zealand in 2026, with plans to expand to other regions.
The MIB will be manufactured for the Australian and New Zealand market by RedEarth at their existing Darra, Queensland facility.
Sophie is editor of One Step Off The Grid and editor of its sister site, Renew Economy. Sophie has been writing about clean energy for more than a decade.
