Anker's Largest Battery Yet Can Keep Your Entire Home Powered During an Outage
Anker is a brand best known for its cables and portable chargers that ensure your mobile devices don’t die at an inopportune time. But the company has been gradually super-sizing its portable power solutions, and with its new Solix line of large batteries, announced Wednesday, Anker will be able to keep an entire home running for those who want to be less dependent on their local power grid, or those struggling with frequent outages.
Although the cost of solar technology has become more affordable and attainable for many homeowners, it comes with its own unique challenges, reliability especially. You can’t always ensure a rooftop solar array is going to be generating enough power to meet your needs 24/7, so a better approach is to pair it with a battery solution to store power when it’s abundant and make it available for when it’s not.
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That’s where the Solix battery storage system comes into play. Sometime next year, it will be available in various capacities and sizes, with the largest option being roughly the size of a small refrigerator. The batteries are also designed to be modular, so multiple units can be daisy-chained to provide more power output and capacity as needed, from 5kWh, which is enough to keep an average-sized house running for a few hours, up to 180kWh, which could keep power flowing in a house for a week.
That’s more capacity than what the Tesla Powerwall 2 system can be scaled up to, which tops out at 135kWh. Anker promises that its Solix backup system, which relies on lithium iron phosphate batteries controlled by the company’s power management hardware and software, will be compatible with existing solar systems and new ones, and will eventually be able to charge electric vehicles, as well.
The new Anker Solix line will also accommodate home owners whose homes don’t have a roof or backyard for a solar array, or even a wall to fill with fridge-size batteries. Condo and apartment owners in Europe have already been able to purchase Anker’s Solix RS40 balcony solar panel system, which, as the name implies, allows solar panels to be mounted to balcony railings (assuming the building is cool with it). Next year, the solar system can be paired with the modular Solix Solarbank batteries, with capacities ranging from 1.6kWh to 3.2kWh, providing a few hours of emergency power during an outage.
The one thing Anker hasn’t revealed about the Solix line is how much it will cost. But yesterday’s announcement also included news that Anker’s PowerHouse line of portable power stations are being updated with the Solix branding, including the Anker PowerHouse 767, now known as the Anker Solix F2000, which offers over 2kWh of power for $2,000—which gives a rough idea of what 180kWh of power will cost.
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