Mindsets literally change with the wind during a bushfire emergency – from preparation to preservation and back again – and as bushfires rage across Australia, some of our customers in bushfire-impacted areas wondered how their solar energy systems could better serve them during emergency events.
Recent bushfire movements in northeast Victoria had a number of Mondo Ubi battery customers ask if their energy systems could be programmed to:
Charge their battery via solar or the grid, then;
Discharge their battery only when a grid outage occurs
After a couple of different customer enquiries over the Christmas period, Mondo quickly implemented this enhanced “emergency” battery function bringing peace of mind to many customers.
The modification meant that households could be confident of a full battery at the start of a power outage, thus providing some redundancy for emergency purposes.
In response to the function offered by Mondo, one battery customer, Mark McKenzie-McHarg, said: “You cannot imagine how important it is to now know we can charge our battery full and then hold that in readiness for a possible power outage and fire threat.”
“Our plan is to leave early, but just in case, we thoroughly ready our home to defend – having the battery which can power our fire pump/sprinkler system gives awesome extra security. You cannot conceive how much more secure a full battery makes us feel, thanks so much.”
Whilst this feature was possible through some quick manual programming by Mondo technicians, there are plans to develop an “emergency” button as a standard feature on the Mondo Portal. With the press of a button, you will be able to set your battery to charge to capacity from the grid and only discharge if an outage occurs.
Special mention to Solar Integrity, Mondo’s strategic partner in the area, who helped to facilitate the update.
