E3/DC: Ten-Year Anniversary and Highly Exciting Plans
The Osnabrück-based energy storage specialist E3/DC has celebrated its ten-year anniversary. The provider was founded in 2010 as a spin-off from the automotive manufacturer Karmann, brought its first home power plant to the market two years later, and has since focused on solutions to make residential and commercial buildings fully electric self-sufficient units. From the beginning, e-mobility also played a significant role: the engineers at Karmann were working on the development of charging technology for electric vehicles. With the spin-off, the focus shifted entirely to the market for solar power storage systems, which was just emerging at the time, using expertise in power electronics and battery technology. Today, the company sees itself as a "leading provider of solutions for power storage and sector coupling" and employs over 120 people.
The company aims to remain at the forefront of topics such as energy storage, energy management, and e-mobility in the future. The guiding motto: "Storing is good, intelligent control is better". When starting with the support of Oldenburg's EWE AG, the concept of self-consumption was just beginning to take hold in the photovoltaic industry.
"Using solar power directly from the roof was already more attractive than feeding it into the grid, but without battery storage, it was only very limitedly possible," recall the founders.
Concepts for solar power storage were "sprouting up like mushrooms". In the PV industry, there were discussions about lead-gel batteries and AC-coupled storage. The developers at E3/DC made far-reaching fundamental decisions at that time, which still define the home power plant today.
"Our idea was: The home power plant will be a DC storage system and it will be 'All In One', meaning a system from a single source with an integrated solar inverter and its own energy management. It will have the best and most powerful lithium-ion batteries. And as an island-capable system, it will be able to deliver real three-phase backup power," remembers founder and CEO Andreas Piepenbrink.
Independence in Heating and Mobility
In 2012, the company's own development expertise enabled the first home power plant. The now patented principle has remained since then, but the core product has been continuously developed in terms of power electronics and software, summarizes the provider. Beyond intelligently controlled self-consumption in the household, it has been shown that much more independence is possible with solar power. "The concept of sector coupling was already closely linked to the home power plant for E3/DC," analyze the specialists. For years, customers have been optimizing their self-consumption with heat pumps and – through the communicative E3/DC wall box – with the electric car, which offers the highest savings potential compared to conventional energy use.
"The rapidly growing e-mobility in particular provided and continues to provide the direction for further developments: PV systems and storage systems," E3/DC is convinced.
They must be able to charge electric cars with their own energy in the evenings and at night with high power and large capacity. The provider has been making this possible for two years with the PRO series of the home power plant and also offers intelligent load management for the wall box. This should ensure that 22-kW charging stations can also be installed with undersized house connections and charge with full solar power through power regulation.
Outlook: Fast and Bidirectional Charging, Modular DC Energy Storage
Since the end of 2017, E3/DC has been part of the Hager Group, a leading provider of solutions and services for electrical installations. As part of this international group, the company is moving into the future with fundamentally new developments.
- In residential areas, the focus is on bidirectional charging, that is, the DC charging of the car with solar power and vice versa, feeding energy from the car battery into the house grid. Complete DC charging technology is to be market-ready in two years.
- In the commercial sector, the already successful modular energy storage system, the Quattroporte series, will be supplemented in the future by a hybrid storage system with its own inverter and medium charging capacity as well as by a high-voltage power storage system focusing on very high discharge capacities. The focus here is particularly on fast charging processes in fleets and the reduction of load peaks, known as peak shaving.
Andreas Piepenbrink, founder and CEO of E3/DC, is optimistic about the future of the company: "We are very well prepared for further market developments with future-proof products and forward-looking developments. The political framework conditions are good, and the customers' desire for independence and for making a meaningful contribution to climate protection ensures strong, stable growth," predicts the electrical engineering specialist.
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