Anker is widely known for making smartphone power adapters and USB cables for home and travel, but now the company is trying something new. It will be unveiled at the company’s ReCharge event in New York City on Tuesday a new “Solix” line of products aimed at powering your home, even if the electricity grid fails. It also adds a battery for use with its DIY balcony-mounted solar panel solution to give apartment dwellers and renters a little independence from stored energy.
The main star of Anker’s announcement includes a Tesla Powerwall-like home solar energy storage system that can power everything in your home. Anker’s solution is designed to be modular: it can be equipped with as little as 5 kWh of power, about the size of a hybrid car battery, or as much as 180 kWh, which is about the size of the R1T Max Pack battery from Rivian.
By comparison, Tesla’s latest Powerwall 2 is set at 13.5 kWh, but can be scaled shoulder-to-shoulder by up to 10 units. It also has variable costs somewhere around $11,500 per unit installed. And if you want Tesla’s Powerwall, you have to order it now with solar panels.
Meanwhile, Anker has not disclosed pricing for its Solix battery, but plans to make the system compatible with existing solar panels or new solar panels supplied by Anker. It uses LFP batteries stacked vertically in modules, with the brain on top where it controls power flow. And it’s all connected to a smartphone app. Anker will not ship the battery system this year, but plans to launch it globally in 2024.
In Germany, Anker sells solar panels designed to work on balconies, and now it has a new “Solarbank” battery pack that can work with it across Europe – like a mini Powerwall. So now European apartment and condo dwellers can get involved in home energy storage by sacrificing the walk-out space that was absolutely worth the extra monthly rent or mortgage. Solarbank is also expandable from 1.6 kWh to 3.2 kWh and works with most existing microinverters, including the one bundled with Anker’s plug-and-play two-panel Solix balcony solution. Simply plug Anker’s inverter directly into a standard household outlet to feed energy back to your appliances, diverting the excess to the battery.
Anker is also adding the Solix brand name to current products, such as the $2,000 F2000 mobile case portable power station (also called 767 PowerHouse). It has a 2048 Wh battery that can be doubled with an additional expansion battery, and can be charged with an optional 200 W solar panel generator accessory.
If you’re interested in an Anker home battery solution, start a conversation with the company’s consultants today. through its website. Home energy storage is a fairly young but growing market, and companies like EcoFlow and now Anker are making it even more accessible.
