Adding a Battery to your Solar and Green CATCH hot water system? Here’s everything you need to know.

With all the buzz around the new federal battery rebate, many of our Green CATCH customers have reached out asking:

How will my Green CATCH work with a Battery?

Green CATCH diverts surplus solar into your hot water system before it is exported to the grid. It monitors your hot water and energy flow to determine the best times to heat your hot water. On a typical 5 kW system Green CATCH will offset an impressive 90-95% of your hot water usage, saving you hundreds of dollars every year.

What to consider before adding a battery? If your roof space is limited and you can’t fit more solar on the roof, firstly check how much energy your system is exporting to the grid before looking at a battery. In general, if you can't add more solar (always a good choice), it makes sense to add a battery roughly equivalent in size to how many kWh you export to the grid on a typical day, e.g. if your electricity bill shows that your average daily kWh exported is 8kWh, then a 8-10kWh battery is likely the right size for you.

What Happens When You Add a Battery?

When you engage with a solar retailer ensure they know you have a Green CATCH on site. Slight changes will need to be made to your Green CATCH to ensure the battery does not see the hot water as a load and discharge into it. You can find the installation manual for battery (hybrid) sites here. Unfortunately, this solution means that you lose visibility of the hot water load, and you will no longer see the diversion profile on your monitoring platform that you are used to. Important Note: Green CATCH is Not Recommended for 3-Phase Hybrid Sites

Green CATCH is a single-phase device, and on 3-phase hybrid systems, it cannot accurately detect surplus solar. Due to net metering and the way batteries discharge across all three phases, Green CATCH does not have the capabilities to correctly manage your hot water under this application. A Smarter Solution

To maintain your visibility and hot water control, and add essential smart control for your battery, we recommend adding CATCH Control to your new battery. CATCH Control integrates with solar and batteries to fully optimise your system. CATCH Control intelligently manages batteries and determines the loads they discharge into and give you full access to advanced functionality that turn your solar and battery system into a complete electrified home.

CATCH Control enables:

• Advanced visibility and control see total site usage and control loads based on export, weather, pricing, time and more.

• Exclusion zones to prevent your battery from discharging into visible loads like hot water, EVs, or pools

• Advanced Plan recommendations Built into every CATCH Control allowing you to take full control of your energy bills. *Average savings $396 per year* What About VPPs or the Wholesale Energy Market?

Homeowners are starting to explore Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) or wholesale energy trading energy plans like Amber Electric. These systems export battery energy during peak pricing, helping you turn your energy bill into an income stream. But when you have a Green CATCH on site, this can result in lost opportunity. Green CATCH see’s energy flowing to the grid as surplus electricity and does not know this energy is coming from the batteries rather than excess solar. This means heating your hot water instead of earning you money during the peak period.

CATCH Control enables you to fully control all of your Consumer Energy Resources, i.e. your solar, hot water, battery and EV. This means that you won't use your valuable battery energy to heat your hot water, and your hot water will always heat from the cheapest energy available Learn More

Whether you’re looking to save more on hot water, future-proof your battery installs, or participate in the energy market — CATCH Control gives you the tools to do it all.

Learn More about CATCH Control Here