hybrid technology

At the Intersolar North America conference in San Francisco, Ideal Power has introduced a three-port, 30kW hybrid converter family for off-grid, grid-tied and grid resilient applications to integrate energy storage and solar power.

The developer of disruptive power conversion stated that due to an improvement in size, weight, cost and efficiency, the converter is able to integrate multiple power sources while lowering the cost of delivering grid resiliency during blackouts and reducing dependency on diesel fuel for off-grid applications.

The hybrid converter production line uses the company’s Power Packet Switching Architecture in a three-port product. This shall allow to combine PV inverter capabilities on one DC port, bi-directional battery converter capabilities on the second DC port and provide an AC port supporting both grid-tied and off-grid applications.

"We also expect our hybrid converter to improve modularity and interoperability, so that microgrid systems can migrate from custom engineered projects to using standard plug-and-play components," said Dan Brdar, chief executive officer of Ideal Power.

Ideal Power said during Intersolar North America that it expects the initial installation of the system in commercial buildings that have to improve grid resiliency to blackouts.  

At Intersolar Europe, the hybrid converter received the 2014 electrical energy storage award for energy efficiency improvement and cost effectiveness of combined energy storage and PV applications.