Australia will be the first country outside the US to get Enphase Energy’s third generation IQ Battery home energy storage system, with the company confirming its launch Down Under sometime within the coming two months.
In a results announcement on Tuesday, the US microinverter and solar storage specialist said it was preparing to launch the latest version of its 5kWh home battery in Australia as well as in its home market of North America this quarter.
Enphase CEO Badri Kothandaraman told investors and analysts that the third generation IQ Batteries – with double the continuous power and triple the peak power of the previous model – was being piloted with select installers in Australia ahead of the imminent launch.
There is no word, yet, on costs, but Kothandaram says the improvements to the new generation battery have allowed Enphase to push down costs compared to the previous model.
“As an executive team, we are hyperfocused on batteries as much as on our microinverters – our learning curve on batteries has been tremendous,” Kothandaraman said.
“As we speak… our second generation batteries are getting better and better every day in both their installation and performance. Our third generation battery … that’ll be even better.
“With …double the continuous power and triple the peak power and with enhanced modularity as well as serviceability, that helps us in dropping costs compared to the prior generation,” he said.
“And of course it’s LFP, so it’s the safest battery.”
The 5kWh IQ Battery has a lithium-iron phosphate chemistry and comes as a “plug and play” AC-coupled unit that is easy to install and easy to scale up.
Each battery unit includes four embedded Enphase bi-directional IQ8 microinverters to switch energy from DC to AC and back again, to allow for back-up power in grid outages.
The battery has a total capacity of 5kWh (usable capacity 4.96kWh), a rated continuous output power of 3.98kVA, a peak output power of 7.68kVA (3 seconds), 6.14kVA (10 seconds) and a round-trip efficiency of 96%.
Kothandaraman says the company charted 6 per cent quarter-on-quarter growth in the Australian market from the final quarter of last year to the end of Q1, 2023.
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.
