Because of the growing concerns surrounding the use of fossil fuels and a greater demand for a cleaner, more efficient, and more resilient energy grid, the use of energy storage systems, or ESS, has increased dramatically in the past decade. Renewable sources of energy such as solar and wind power are intermittent, and so storage becomes a key factor in supplying reliable energy.

ESS also help meet energy demands during peak times and can supply backup power during natural disasters and other emergencies. Examples of natural disasters include coastal flooding, drought, earthquake, heat wave, hurricane (tropical cyclone), landslide, riverine flooding, tornado, tsunami, volcanic activity, and wildfire.

This is how we produce and store energy with our Sunact Disaster Resilience Unit (S-DRU).

Size of ESS depends on users’ needs:

  • Load demand before, during and after emergency
  • Desired days of autonomy and environmental factors

The best practical combination is a medium sized battery system that uses a small generator as a multi-day backup energy source. This combination represents the best of both worlds: instant, fully automated silent battery backup at a low upfront cost, and multiday backup capability with sporadic recharging sessions from a small generator.

Depending on sate or province regulation, the option of feeding back the excessive power to the grid through net metering and receiving generation credit towards the future electricity use could be available too.

S-DRU can supply clean power for multiple weeks far beyond what conventional diesel generators can do without requiring any refueling or intervention. Our smallest system can provide more than two weeks of autonomy for the critical loads of a small rural residential house.S-DRU comes with ESS as a standard offering, but the ESS could be supplied as a standalone mobile or fixed system for residential and commercial applications without the need for purchasing S-DRU.

S-DRU ESS is easily scalable. It could be used for an individual structure or a small community with multiple structures depending on EM strategy.

S-DRU could be used to form a Microgrid for a community. A Microgrid is a self-sufficient energy system that serves a discrete geographic footprint, such as a college campus, hospital complex, business center, or neighborhood. Within microgrids are one or more kinds of distributed energy (solar panels, wind turbines, battery storage, generators) that produce its power. Microgrids can supply power to customers during outage of power grid and improve power quality when connected to the grid.

S-DRU is also an effective solution for supporting communities that face humanitarian, refugee, or war crises.The ESS could be sized to charge Electrical Vehicles (EV). If an EV has the Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) capabilities, it could be used as a buffer for expanding S-DRU ESS capacity.

S-DRU is equipped with an industrial PLC and comes with following standard communication capabilities:

  • 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi Client
  • Dual SIM 4G LTE Modem with Active GPS
  • Dual RS-232 Serial Ports
  • Dual RS-485 Serial Ports
  • Mixed RS-232/RS-485 Serial Ports

The S-DRU controller integrates with various smart sensors, collecting critical data about water quality, potability, pressure, temperature, power generation status, energy storage and load management enabling the information to be displayed on customized executive dashboards and sent to a variety of industry-leading IIoT cloud platforms in real time.This data can then be analyzed and interpreted into actionable insights with tangible outcomes. The unit can also securely connect remote assets to IIoT cloud platforms through a variety of built-in tools, including 2-way TLS certificates support, VPN, VLANs, routing, and a stateful firewall.

The live status of S-DRU power generation and storage units are available through Sunact Systems’ client portal and SunAct mobile app which pulls the data from the cloud.

The data gathered from onboard weather station is communicated and presented remotely using unit’s cellular service and cloud connectivity. Following measurements help the application program to create a local weather model that could be used for weather prediction, operational planning, and decision-making purposes.

  • 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi Client
  • Wind Speed
  • Wind Direction
  • Ambient Temperature
  • Relative Humidity
  • Barometric Pressure
  • Rainfall
  • Leaf Wetness
  • Solar Radiation