Astrel Group - Case Study - 4-noks - From producer to prosumer thanks to PV self-consumption
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Case study From producer to prosumer thanks to solar PV self-consumption From 85% of energy sold to the grid, up to 85% of self-consumed energy thanks to 4-noks technology. “Should you be interested, I’m happy to share with you how I improved my daily self-consumption from 14% up to 86%”. With a few words, Gianni Z. introduces himself in a friendly and simple way, offering his own experience on self-consumption. With a strong attitude toward a green lifestyle, Gianni lives in Verona in an eco-sustainable Wolf Haus structure, built following criteria of environmental footprint reduction and with low energy consumption systems. A firm believer that each person can actively contribute to the environmental safeguard on a daily basis, in 2016 he decided to install a solar PV system (4.3 kW) to further reduce his domestic emissions. Gianni followed his installer’s advice and he immediately integrated to his system a monitoring device for both energy production and consumptions, realizing the importance of having at disposal a full set of information on domestic energy flows and self-consumption capacity. “Being a tech savvy, I chose 4-noks Elios4you Smart. This device allowed me to have full control of my system from my smartphone via an easy and intuitive App. I understood the great potential of learning its behaviour and consumptions from the very first day, and how that could lead to optimization” recounts Gianni. The first step after installation was programming the activation of the heat pump with a timer (from 8.30 am to 8.30 pm), to properly use hours of high production to heat his domestic sanitary water. Gianni soon noticed how the energy effectively self-consumed was only a minimum part compared to the energy produced: with a 14% self-consumption, the energy left was necessarily fed to the grid. Furthermore, he still needed to purchase a great quantity of energy to cover his daily energy requirement. Consulting his system installer, Gianni saw a great opportunity of improvement: heating sanitary water to use the energy previously fed to the grid and cut down his energy bill. To reach his goal, he thus decided to add 4-noks Power Reducer, which, once connected to an immersion heater, could heat water using only the energy available from solar PV system. Figure 1 Chart of the energy sold to the grid and self-consumed before the installation of Power Reducer. “However, I couldn’t supply the immersion heater of my heat pump with Power Reducer, since it was not designed for that purpose”. Astrel Group - Case Study - From producer to prosumer thanks to PV self-cons

Fully determined to find a suitable solution, Gianni decided to purchase an immersion heater tank with 120l capacity. Therefore, he connected Power Reducer RC to the immersion heater within the storage tank, which was in turn connected to the heat pump. As a result, Power Reducer could heat water adjusting the energy coming from solar PV, using all watts available, without ever purchasing any energy from the grid. Then, the heat pump receiving water from the immersion heater tank consumed much less energy, or none at all, because the water was already warm. Figure 2 Chart of connection...

ASTRELGROUP System details • Household: 2 people • House: detached Wolf Haus 140 sq. with basement of same dimensions in Verona • Solar PV system: SunEdison Silvantis® Series; 15 panels of 285 W for a total of 4.3 kW • Inverter: ABB Power One PVI 4200 TL OUTD S • Water heater: Ariston Nuos Evo from 110 lt. • Immersion heater tank: GIONA HOLDING ISS 120 lt. 1.500 W • 2 electrical radiators from 700 W • Year of installation of solar PV system: begin of 2016 • Company installing solar PV system and monitoring system: IT-Energy s.r.l. di S. Bonifacio (VR) • Elios4you Smart installation:...