JinkoSolar launches “Suntank” home battery in Australia

Australia’s home battery market has a new product in the mix, with the launch of a modular lithium iron phosphate energy storage system called Suntank by Chinese PV giant JinkoSolar.

Jinko says the Suntank is scalable from 2.56kWh to 25.6kWh with a single-phase hybrid inverter, 5kW power output, an operating temperature ranging from -10°C~+50°C, and 10 years product warranty.

Jinko says the battery offers both AC and DC-coupling methods to realise multi-directional energy interaction between PV modules, batteries, and the grid – and it offers the option of power back-up in the case of grid outages.

“Due to the instability of the power grid, supply shortage still exists in some areas of Australia, energy storage trend is gaining importance as a counter to this situation,” a company statement says.

“If the grid is lost, the system would switch to backup mode and AC output is supplied via the [emergency power supply] LOAD port using energy from PV and battery.”

The new battery offering from a very well established name in global solar comes at a time when the Australian home storage market is poised to take off, boosted by high grid electricity prices.

Data presented by SunWiz managing director Warwick Johnston at last week’s Australian Clean Energy Summit in Sydney revealed a major turnaround in customer interest in installing both solar and battery storage at the same time.

Johnston said customers appeared to be keen to invest in home battery storage as a sort of energy insurance policy, as grid supply and costs became increasingly unpredictable.

“As one of the most mature photovoltaic markets in the world, we believe that energy storage will become an indispensable part of the Australian market,” said JinkoSolar country manager, APAC, Thomas Bywater.

“JinkoSolar will also make every effort to lead the Australia photovoltaic market into a new PV+ era.”