Switzerland's Solar Manager AG has developed an energy management platform for PV systems combined with heat pumps. The system is compatible with the inverters of Solaredge, Solax, Kostal, Fiemer, Fronius, and other manufacturers. It is also compatible with more than 20 heat pumps.

“If the compatibility to the available devices is given, our system can work either with residential or commercial installations,” CEO Andreas Kuhn told pv magazine.

The Solar Manager system can be used with a mobile app that allows people to visualize household consumption data in real time. It also offers an overview of the past seven days to show amounts of generated and self-consumed solar energy, as well as how much electricity has been purchased from the grid.

The system supports two different ways to integrate a heat pump with a PV system: integration via a relay contact or via two relay contacts. With the latter, the heat pump can immediately react when surplus solar power is available.

Some heat pumps support integration via the internet, which enables finer control, as precise values ​​can be transmitted via a LAN interface. This interface offers bidirectional communication.

With the Solar Manager, the heat pump uses PV electricity during the day. “The system can be bought either with a PV system or a heat pump,” Kuhn explained. “Nearly 5,000 systems are now installed in Switzerland.”