On November 2, 2023, Thursday, our BatteryReVive team went to the company Vimasol, in Fermentões Guimarães, with the aim of understanding all the connections from the solar panels to our final product. We had the pleasure of being welcomed by Mechanical Engineer José and Mechanical Engineer José Pedro, who were willing to clarify any doubts and help with our project.
First, they showed us around the company's offices, where we started our conversation. They started by presenting a little about the company and its purpose, which, contrary to ours, does not focus on the manufacturing of the product, but only on installation.
With this, they were very careful to explain that installing the entire system is difficult and expensive and therefore we should just focus on the production and installation of our product. To install the rest of the system, such as the solar panels and the inverter (mentioned later), the most accurate and profitable choice would be to form a partnership with companies in this field. They then introduced more details of the photovoltaic system. As solar panels are a set of photovoltaic cells, they harness the energy of sunlight to directly create a difference in electrical potential at their terminals, producing a continuous electrical current. This current flows through a solar cable whose final destination is an inverter, installed inside the house. If we want energy to be stored in the scooters' batteries, we cannot use a simple inverter, otherwise all the energy not consumed by the house would go directly to the public grid. Therefore, the hybrid inverter will be the best option, as it will allow energy to be stored in the battery, when the household's consumption is satisfied. In addition to distributing energy throughout the house, battery and network (in this respective priority) through usual cables, the inverter transforms direct current into alternating current, to be sent to the house. The battery, which is installed together and interconnected with the inverter, remains in direct current and therefore a BMD (Battery Management Device) is necessary, which will allow us to control the charging and discharging of the battery.
Having understood all the concepts of the photovoltaic system, we move on to budgets. What is the average price of a battery was an extremely necessary question that worried us, as we knew it wasn't going to be cheap. However, we were told that batteries do have a high cost, but it is a fair value, given the role they play. To provide us with more concrete values, the Engineers showed us sales graphs, in which on average the batteries most similar to ours, with a capacity of 5 kWh, were around €4000, which pleased us as this value plus the price of installation and VAT were within our product price.
Finally, and with the basic learnings for our product, we went to discover this company's warehouse. With the warehouse we were able to have a better perception of dimensions, as well as the organization of the sections of the photovoltaic system products, in order to facilitate access.
In short, with this visit we were able to understand the connections and components that we will need in addition to our main product, the prices at which we can sell our product within this market and some of the dimensions and organization that we can adopt in our company.
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