When James Bartley, master electrician and owner of Missouri contractor Skywire Electrical Systems, talks to customers who are looking to install solar, he notices that what they’re really looking for is independence.
“Homeowners want the independence of knowing when and if the utility company went down, they would have power, while, at the same time, offsetting their utility bill during normal operation,” Bartley says.
Bartley meets these requests with a grid-hybrid system with battery backup, which provides continuous electrical power for refrigerators, freezers, lighting, heat and more despite any possible utility outages.
But customers are also looking for an aesthetically pleasing system. Typical inverter and charge-controller configurations are surface-mounted, which Bartley says can be intrusive with exposed pipes and wires. So Bartley chose a selection of products from OutBack Power, which are recessed for a much cleaner look.
“OutBack Power’s products make it easy for us to fine tune and customize systems, and the tech support is great,” Bartley says. “Our customers are impressed by the results, and OutBack’s strong reputation in the industry gives them additional assurance as they transition to solar power.”
For this particular installation, Skywire Electric used OutBack Power’s FLEXmax charge controllers, Radian inverter/chargers, FLEXware combiner box and MATE3 system display and controller. The inverters (silver boxes) and charge controllers (black boxes) are recessed so no pipes or wires are exposed. The red boxes are EnergyCell batteries. The system draws on 24 kW of solar panels and a 27-kW generator to back up the battery bank on a cloudy day or during a grid loss.