How your solar and battery work
Where your power is actually coming from, moment to moment. Click through the five everyday situations below and watch it move, and see which circuits keep running when the grid goes down.
Turn your phone sidewaysto see the switchboard.
- Fed from the grid
- Fed from solar and battery
- No supply
Why the contactor
It isolates the backup busbar from the grid before the inverter energises it, so nothing can be pushed back into a dead street while linesmen are working on it.
What stays on
Two lighting circuits and one power circuit — lights through the house and a single run of outlets for the fridge, the modem and a phone charger.
What stops
Air conditioning, the cooktop, hot water and the remaining power and lighting circuit. Keeping the big loads off the backup busbar is what makes the battery last through an outage.