Powernaut Thunor Battery – A Smart Way to Manage Large Energy Consumers

Smart energy management helps you maximize your energy storage. In this post, we will introduce how it works and what the possibilities are through a couple of blog posts. In a previous blog post, we wrote about the Qilowatt solution; in this post, we will cover the powerful energy management solution Powernaut from the Estonian manufacturer Sandfox.

But first, a brief reminder of what energy management is and what problem it solves.

Why Manage Energy Smartly?

If you have your own energy production, such as solar panels, you have likely encountered the issue of producing a lot of energy on sunny days, while the income from sales is low due to the abundance of producers. A logical solution is a storage system that allows you to store energy during peak production times, for example, to sell it back to the grid at a higher price or to use it during dark hours. Even when you don’t have your own energy production, you can choose when to store energy and when to consume it based on the electricity market price.

Most inverters, including the Deye inverters offered by Thunor, allow for time-based programming—when you want to store energy from the grid, when to sell to the grid, and when to use stored energy solely for your own consumption. Additionally, you can set simple limits, such as selling energy to the grid only until X% of the battery capacity remains.

Since market prices change daily, weather (and the energy produced by the sun) is difficult to predict, and consumption habits can vary from day to day, adjusting the inverter settings daily can be quite cumbersome and requires good knowledge of the inverter.

This is where smart energy management solutions come into play, allowing automatic implementation of storage, sales, and consumption management.

What is Powernaut?

The product we want to introduce this time is the smart energy management solution Powernaut from Sandfox OÜ. Compared to other available solutions, Powernaut excels in its ability to manage up to seven different energy consumers (such as a boiler, heating system, electric car, sauna heater, etc.) simultaneously and separately by linking the energy storage system, production station, and consumers into a unified system.

Powernaut allows you to create different rules for all consumers—based on prices, battery charge levels, solar output, or time of day. For example, you can set a rule that you charge your car with solar-produced electricity, heat your boiler at night, and manage your general heating system according to the five cheapest market prices or when the market price is less than €0.10/kWh.

Powernaut enables automatic mode changes based on the time of year and can use real-time weather information as an input when the grid is available. You can manage the entire system either over the internet using the relevant management interface or through the Powernaut device installed in the system. Using the Powernaut device for control does not require an internet connection.

Powernaut allows you to automatically sell your produced electricity at the highest electricity prices.

Powernaut is compatible with Thunor batteries, providing a detailed overview of the battery's “health” and implementing several additional protection functions to optimize battery life. These are also features that are not found in other solutions available on the market.

The Powernaut and Thunor teams assist in configuring the system to meet your needs. You should consider an investment in the range of €200 to €2,000. Depending on the solution, ongoing fees may apply.

If you are interested, get in touch with us at info@thunor.eu or call us at (+372) 55 941 611. Together with Powernaut's team, we can put together a solution that meets your needs and helps you smarten up your energy management!