Sungrow Retrofits Warnertown Solar Farm With DC-Coupled Battery Storage

Sungrow has completed a hybrid retrofit at Warnertown Solar Farm in South Australia, upgrading six of the site's 30 SG110CX PV inverters to SH110CX hybrid inverters, each paired with a 200kWh Powerkeeper battery unit, adding a total of 1.2 megawatt-hours of new storage capacity. The retrofit adds battery storage directly to an existing solar installation without requiring a full site rebuild.

 

The upgrade specifically avoids transformer modifications by integrating storage on the DC side of the system rather than through a separate AC-coupled battery installation, an approach the company says reduces project complexity and lowers investment costs compared with conventional retrofit methods. South Australia's grid compliance rules can require lengthy approval processes and transformer upgrades when adding AC-coupled batteries to existing solar sites, and Sungrow says its DC-coupled approach helps minimise those regulatory and infrastructure hurdles specifically.

 

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The added storage is intended to let the solar farm capture surplus generation during periods of high solar output and discharge it when electricity prices or grid conditions make that stored energy more valuable, a strategy relevant to South Australia's market given its combination of high renewable energy penetration, periodic grid constraints and volatile wholesale electricity prices. Rock Liu, a Sungrow technical support engineer, described the retrofit as demonstrating the company's ability to tailor its storage solution to site-specific constraints including available grid capacity, transformer limits and site layout.

 

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Newman Mundy, co-founder of Solmech and SMECH, described the installation process as straightforward, involving inverter replacement and battery addition within the existing site shelter with minimal civil modification required. Jarrad Pangrazio, general manager of SMECH Energy, credited close collaboration with Sungrow's engineering team throughout design, installation and commissioning for the project's smooth delivery.

 

Source: Sungrow