Samansco recently hosted a solar symposium and as much as it was them announcing a couple of pretty interesting new products, it’s some of the presentations from their suppliers that caught my attention.
The ideal solar panel
Longi was present at the symposium and for those that are not familiar with them, they are a Tier 1 solar panel manufacturer. What this means is they have the capacity to design the panels and test the performance of their hardware.
Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) has developed a tiering system for module manufacturers
Longi presentation
which employs a set of criteria to qualify for Tier 1 status (i.e. the most bankable module
manufacturers in the market):
Must have provided own-manufactured, own-brand products to six different >1.5MW projects,
which have been financed non-recourse by six different non development banks, in the past two
years.
Module maker must be in the public domain and must not have filed for bankruptcy or a form of
insolvency protection, or experienced a major default on bond payments
BUT, as BNEF rightly points out their classification is purely a measure of industry acceptance,
and not a testament to the quality of product or the likelihood of bankruptcy of the manufacturer
The actual construction of a solar panel consists of a shiny silicon wafer, similar to the silicon wafers used to make chips powering electronic devices. Longi takes this wafer and prints a custom design on it to turn it into the finished light-gathering cell.
Longi is the largest producer of these cells with some of the more popular solar module brands using cells manufactured and supplied by Longi in their modules.
The report shows that in 2022 LONGi has shipped a total of 85.06GW of monocrystalline silicon wafers, including 42.52GW for external sales and 42.54GW for internal use, steadily ranking 1st in global shipments of monocrystalline silicon wafers for 9 consecutive years. In 2022, LONGi shipped 46.76GW of monocrystalline silicon modules, including 46.08GW for external sales and 0.68GW for internal use, steadily ranking 1st in global shipments of modules and market share for 3 consecutive years.
Longi 2022 annual report
They also hold a number of records when it comes to the efficiency of their cells in terms of watt per unit area, performance across a wide range of temperatures, and low light performance.
One of the lesser-known facts about solar modules is that their output is affected by temperature. The higher the temperature, the less peak power they produce which is lower than their rated output. As a result, in winter, solar systems produce more power than in summer.
This is something that is crucial when determining the capacity of solar modules that you will feed into an inverter. You might find that a system whose solar array is built to the maximum capacity of the inverter might end up producing more peak power in winter than what the inverter is rated for.
Samansco’s new products
The star of the show was a new Energy Storage System (ESS) made by Rebel, an American company specializing in alternative power and backup solutions. This battery is called the Rebel Ultr5 and it’s a 5KWh battery. A majority of the batteries in its class are still at 4.8KWh so it is a higher capacity.
Some of its specs include a 90% Depth of Discharge (DoD), a 6000 charge cycle rating, and the flexibility of connecting up to 16 of them together for an 80KWh ESS capacity. It’s also IP53-rated making it resistant to some moisture. Let’s see how it compares to other batteries in its weight class.
| Rebel Ultr5 | Pylontech UP5000 | Blue Carbon UU 48-200/250/300 | BYD BATTERY-BOX LV Flex Lite | |
| Capacity | 5.12kWh | 4.8kWh | 10.24/12.8/15.36kWh | 5kWh |
| Output current | 75A | 50A | 100A | 70A |
| Depth of Discharge | 90% | 95% | 80% | 100% |
| Charge cycle life | 6,000 | 4,500 | 6,000 | – |
| Single string capacity | 16 | 16 | 8 | 64 |
| IP rating | 54 | 20 | – | 20 |
| Warranty | 10 years | 10 years | 5 years | 10 years |
Compared with a couple of brands present in Zimbabwe, it’s a competitive product. Unfortunately, the pricing is not yet available to compare but expect it to retail at around the same price as the Pylontech battery.
There will be a firmware update coming in for the battery allowing it to be monitored remotely. It also can only operate when communication to the inverter is present. If there is no communication, the battery enters sleep mode and stops supplying power. Speaking of inverters, the Rebel Ultr5 was tested for full compatibility with the following inverters:
- REBEL MAX
- PHOCOS ANY-GRID
- SUNSYNK/DEYE
- VICTRON
- MUST
- SMA
- SOLIS
- PYLON
- GOODWE
- SOL-ARK
- KODAK
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17 comments
Cool addition
Cool addition
Cool
One article after days or week is insane
Writing articles without any thorough information,Rebel is no american brand,its not used in America or anywhere else for that matter,its an oem for samansco made to confuse the consumer
Apple is not an American brand it is an oem of Foxconn made in China and shipped from China by some guys in Silicon Valley
Wake up clown…
It was a good event. I will definitely consider buying the Ultra 5 battery
I will definitely consider buying the Ultra 5 battery
It’s exciting that companies in Zimbabwe are still able to do this and launch new products. Excited to try out this new battery and solar panel when i have the money for it.
yawn, another waste of time and data reading this garbage ….
i just came for the prices
Sounds good,I will think about it.
Apparently attractive product with higher capacity so after installation true results depict the desired claim
Bvu Bvu Bvumburu yeNdege ✈✈🍌🍌 the one and only
Kkkkk murikswese
Thanks for the article
Forgive me if l missed something here, l think it said if it loses communication with the inverter, it will go into sleep mode.
So you are telling me that this unit is online? l am not a fan of all these smart devices. I once saw an article from some guys from the East who were trying to break John Deere’s and his ilk’s stranglehold on the agricultural sector.
He proclaimed that all his company’s gadgets would be web enabled and would be sending information back to base. Not sure whether this is with consent or not and whether this is with your data or surreptiously through what, oh those many many ‘research’ satelites Govts are fond of sending into space.
It shocked me why does a company want to monitor what l am doing on my small patch somewhere in Bubi, Binga or Birchenough? How about if l am an exceptional farmer, them stealing my information and sharing it with my competition or if its these chaps, ‘cloning’ it as they are wont to do.
l find this very disturbing and unacceptable, l have not even come to the point of this guy did not even consider such things as data protection and right to privacy. l do not see him selling these to any Western countries but you may find them flooding Africa, where such things are overlooked. Does anyone remember the AU HQ fiasco, which was another ‘donated’ item. We really need to move away from this beggar mentality, we expose ourselves to such things.
Anyway l for one am not interested in anything which needs that sort of link. Do you remember when X Box tried to say to people well you will need an always enabled X Box, which should report once online that you are connected. They also tried to force people to buy that camera thing. Result PS4 was adopted in droves and noone really bought that X Box.
So when will companies learn not to do such things?
May you give us more information on Samanscor? Who are they, where are they from what is their track record and how are they doing this in Z? Are they going to open shop, are they using agents or are they selling and leaving it to the customer. How about things like repairs, after sales, warranties and upgrades.
l think l saw one of your articles which spoke of the metrics which are used by is Bloomberg to analyse a viable solar firm. Please apply those to this particular entity and may you report based on your analysis whether it would pass the Bloomberg test.
A lot of people seem to forget that for most people in Z solar is expensive and to an extent a lifetime investment which will have a long term effect on them one way or the other. So such things should not be rushed into. For instance the average panel is now capable of doing about 20 or so years and a decent battery will serve you for at least 5 to 10 years at about 50% or better guaranteed output.
So please provide more information about this as these are topical issues.