Sol-Ark is reducing energy storage cost by 50-65 percent with its innovative hybrid inverters, low cost battery partners, and comprehensive product suite
Sol-Ark was founded over a decade ago with the mission of making the most reliable, innovative, and affordable solar storage solutions to power families and businesses. The company’s objective was to address the limitations of existing energy storage solutions, which were often cumbersome, expensive, complex, and offering minimal power capabilities. Through the use of innovation and technology, Sol-Ark is a global leader in energy technology, with over six generations of hybrid inverters. It has built a vast ecosystem that includes thousands of distributors, installers, EPCs, integrators, and battery manufacturers, and is transforming energy resilience for homes and businesses alike.
Tom Brennan, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer, explains his reasoning behind the establishment of Sol-Ark and retraces its history. “At Sol-Ark,
we found installing battery-based systems was very difficult; they were very complex and expensive, and we wanted to make them more readily accessible, prompting us to form the company in 2013. Since then, we come up with a new generation product every two years. Notably, in 2018, we introduced the first hybrid inverter that incorporates all of the necessary electronics to manage solar panels, the grid, generator, and the energy loads in one system, allowing for greater control and efficiency. This was the first hybrid inverter on the US market, and we have continually improved and made our inverters more powerful since then. As a result, we are now able to create versatile yet compact inverters and offer more affordable solutions to our customers, highlighting our focus on affordability for residential, commercial, and industrial clients,” he begins.
Cost savings
Since its early days of pioneering America’s first hybrid inverter, Sol-Ark has developed its product portfolio further. “Typically, the products we offer form part of a wider ecosystem around installing batteries and solar panels. They can include fire safety systems, rapid shutdown devices, different types of hybrid inverters depending on the power size needed and scalability, direct current (DC) optimizers for optimizing the power on panels for shading events, and microinverters that convert DC to alternative current (AC) directly at the panel. Additionally, we offer load management and electric vehicle (EV) solutions. But we used battery partners to drive down the most costly part of the storage system. As a result, our residential systems are 50-65 percent lower cost than anyone else. Our comprehensive suite of products makes us one of the industry’s few one-stop shops for our customers,” he enlightens.
Through these offerings, Sol-Ark aims to bring down the cost of energy for families and businesses by 50 percent+. Tom explains how the company’s products work to achieve this goal. “We have continually improved the power level of our inverters. When we first released our hybrid inverter, it had an eight-kilowatt capacity and was not able to power much aside from critical load items. Now, we have increased the capacity to 15 kilowatts, which is sufficient to cover most of a house. Our multiple battery partners brought down the cost of a 16kWh battery from $10,000 to $2,900. Our 18-kilowatt inverter will be available soon, along with our load management solution. By combining load management with an 18-kilowatt inverter, we can power an entire home with an effective capacity of 36kW. Specifically, the load management system can prevent two air conditioners or electric hot water heaters from starting up simultaneously, as this could exceed the peak capacity of the inverter.
“Our load management system is one sixth less expensive per watt for shedding loads compared to batteries plus inverters. Furthermore, we brought down its overall cost by being agnostic to batteries, as they used to be the most expensive component of our storage solution. In the future, as we are already working with EV manufacturers who embrace our innovative solutions, we will be able to utilize the “effectively free” batteries from the EVs and plug-in hybrids as part of our energy storage system. This means that users will not need to purchase separate batteries – they will come with the vehicle.
By using the batteries that come with EVs and plug-in hybrids, we will be able to eliminate a significant portion of the electronics required and, reduce the cost of our energy storage system by a factor of about five compared to where it is today,” he adds.
Outstanding service
Rated number one in the US for its customer service, Sol-Ark truly stands apart from the competition through its customer care. Tom tells us more about what it entails and how the company consistently delivers top-notch service. “Many larger organizations either put customers in need of assistance on hold for multiple hours or only provide online chats or help sections, as they have eliminated their phone support lines. Meanwhile, our technical support team is significant and readily available seven days a week. We firmly believe in treating our employees like family and our customers like neighbors. In line with this, we use our products in our own homes as a testament to how much we care about the quality of both our products and the experience we provide for our customers. Although we have been profitable for ten years and have reached over $100 million US in revenue, our primary focus is not on profits, but rather on ensuring the success of our clients with our solutions,” he concludes.
By combining outstanding customer care and product reliability and affordability, Sol-Ark is poised to continue popularizing its flagship hybrid inverters.