Salt battery hibernation:
More CO2-free electricity in the cold season

In winter, the bear can no longer find enough food to feed its large body. So it goes into hibernation. It's quite different for humans: Although nature only provides us with a fraction of renewable energies, energy consumption really takes off in the cold season. And with it, CO2 emissions from oil, gas and coal also increase. However, owners of a salt battery storage system with a photovoltaic system can help to reduce winter CO2 emissions. Simply send your salidomo© into hibernation.

How? You want me to switch off the battery storage? Why would you do that? There are good reasons to switch off ALL battery storage in winter. But only the salt battery can survive a hibernation without damage.

Lush in summer, barren in winter

In summer, we produce so much green energy that we sometimes don't even know what to do with all the electricity. But in winter, the renewable energy is nowhere near enough to cover our Switzerland-wide electricity consumption in a CO2-neutral way. The consequence of our increased electricity consumption in winter is the purchase of expensive fossil energy from abroad, which entails high CO2 emissions. Battery storage consumes energy. With the high surpluses in summer, this is of no consequence, but in winter this CO2-free electricity should not be wasted. Therefore, storage in winter is counterproductive.

So it makes sense to switch off the battery storage in winter and to supply every kilowatt hour of PV production from your own roof to the grid. If our electricity companies would now also reward this, all PV systems could not only make a meaningful contribution to climate protection, but also profit from it. And many more storage owners would feed their winter electricity into the community grid.

Stop the storage!

Putting batteries down is quite a risk for most battery types. A deep discharge of a lithium battery renders it unusable and leads to a total loss.

The salt battery is completely different. Only a salt battery can be cleanly taken off the grid and help produce more winter electricity from your photovoltaic system. By switching off, the stand-by consumption of the salt battery is cancelled. The household's own consumption during the day increases. Furthermore, hibernation is good for the battery: it cycles less, which increases its lifespan.

How do you switch off a salt battery?

There are four ways to send the salt battery storage system into hibernation:

1. Switch off the salt battery storage system completely

With this option, you turn off the power to the entire system. You can do this yourself and do not need an electrician on site. To do this, switch off the circuit breaker or main system switch of the salt battery storage system. In the case of emergency power systems, be sure to flip the bypass switch beforehand! Please note that you will then have no emergency power in the event of a power failure. 

2. Switch off the battery inverter remotely

In this option, the battery inverters are shut down via remote maintenance. This can be done by your sales partner or by innovenergy. Even with this variant, you no longer have emergency power with an emergency power system in the event of a grid failure.

3. Switch off one, several or all batteries

This option must be done by your installer or electrician on site. He must unscrew the front panel of the saline battery storage system and switch off the respective batteries manually via the battery switch. This variant is particularly recommended if you have connected Victron solar charge controllers to the salidomo©. PV energy is then still produced into the grid.

A particular advantage of this variant is that only part of the battery storage can be switched off. If, for example, in winter with a salidomo© 18, the PV energy is sufficient to store one battery (9 kWh) but not both (18 kWh), the second battery can be switched off. To conserve the batteries, the other one is shut down alternately in the following year.

For new systems from 2022 onwards, there is a so-called "hibernation hole" in the front panel. With this front panel, you can also switch off the individual batteries yourself. Of course, you can also retrofit your system with a new front panel. If you are interested in this new front panel, please use the request button below for an offer.

4. UPS winter mode

(only have the sales partner or innovenergy carry out the work)

The UPS winter mode is a possibility to drive the system remotely by your sales partner or innovenergy into a kind of minimum operation. Here, the discharge depth of the saline battery storage system is set to 90-100% minimum SoC (state of charge). This variant is particularly useful for emergency power systems and systems with MPPT, as the battery storage system remains available for emergency power. All inverters continue to function. However, this variant contributes less to the reduction of winter CO2 emissions, as a little operation-sustaining electricity is consumed. We will be happy to send you a service offer via the enquiry button.

Thawing the salt battery again in spring

If the entire salt battery storage system (1), the battery inverters (2) or the individual batteries (3) are switched on again in spring, the salt batteries must first be brought to operating temperature. Heating up the salt batteries takes some time and takes about eight to twelve hours. Only then is the system ready for use again and continues to function as usual. On systems with emergency power supply, the bypass switch may only be flipped again after heating up. In the case of UPS winter mode (4), only the minimum SoC must be reset to its original state.

Hibernation offer

You would like to know what kind of hibernation would be optimal for your plant? You feel uncertain and would rather hand over this intervention. The innovenergy sales partners will be happy to help you in this regard. Find a competent contact person near you!