US startup Yotta Energy replaces ballast blocks with batteries

Energy storage company Yotta Energy has unveiled the Yotta Block, the next evolution of the company’s SolarLEAF battery. Designed to replace a standard ballast block in a solar array, the Yotta Block provides 1 kW of battery storage while eliminating the need for separate storage space.

“One of the challenges our founders faced was where to put the batteries,” said Yotta CEO Jordan Harris in an interview with pv magazine USA. “Where you want to put them doesn’t always overlap with where you’re able to put them. That becomes a significant challenge that adds costs and complexity.”

Harris explained that the desire to colocate batteries and rooftop solar drove the company to start developing the Yotta Block, which has the same dimensions and heft as a normal ballast block. Swapping in the Yotta Block, Harris said, means the space that’s already being filled is made more useful by adding energy storage.

Yotta said the new product is universally compatible with all major solar panel racking models.

“The marginal cost or time of installing that battery, relative to a ballast block, is effectively zero,” said the CEO.

The lithium ferro-phosphate blocks can be bought directly from Yotta or through distributors such as Greentech Renewables. Though the price might seem steep at first glance, Harris encourage commercial and industrial (C&I) solar developers to look beyond the hardware costs.

“Hardware is only one part of the project but soft costs in the small and medium C&I market can be considerable,” he said, adding such expense can make up 30% to 40% of project costs. “When you standardize around a solution that deploys everything on the roof, your soft costs are reduced or eliminated,” added Harris.

That way, projects have standardized equipment and installation processes and no other infrastructure upgrades are needed to install Yotta Blocks. That “plug-and-play” capability, coupled with the product’s size and part count reductions, makes the Yotta Block competitive with other energy storage solutions.

That is particularly true for large companies looking to deploy solar and energy storage. If a business has hundreds, or thousands of buildings under management, it is often not feasible to make a project-by-project technology decision, Harris said.

“In those situations, companies want to make a single tech decision that standardizes everything as much as possible, and deploy it across their entire footprint,” said the CEO, noting that a project is in the works at Yotta to do just that for an American dollar store corporation.

“If they ever want to deploy [solar and storage] across their entire footprint, they need to make a hardware decision and go,” Harris added. “Our solution enables that.”

Though the layout of solar arrays may differ, basic components will be the same.

“The installation team and operations and maintenance teams already know how to handle ballast blocks and have a standardized process for how to install them,” Harris said. “Our batteries slot right in; it greatly streamlines everything, which leads to cost savings and better economics.”

This article was amended to remove pricing information.

From pv magazine USA.