AMPROTEQ06:00 – 08:00
The morning peak
Load climbs past 350 kW while the array is still waking up. In June–August that energy costs R7.39/kWh on Megaflex; Solaris carries it on stored energy charged overnight at R1.23.
Visualisation
Solaris™ Energy Management System
The savings are made every four seconds.
Hardware sets the ceiling. Solaris decides how much of it you actually capture — choosing, continuously, whether the site draws from solar, the battery, the grid or the generator, against your tariff calendar, your notified maximum demand and your state of charge.
A Day Of Dispatch
One site. Twenty-four hours.
Every kilowatt accounted for.
This is a measured South African industrial load profile — a double-peaked 24/7 facility with a 430 kW morning peak — paired with a 1 MWp array and a 2 MWh battery. Hover any hour. Toggle the battery out and watch what the peak windows cost.
Site dispatch — Megaflex high-demand weekday
Solar direct
Battery discharge
Eskom import
Charging / SOC
Tariff: Eskom Megaflex 2026/27, high-demand season (June–August) weekday, active energy below 500 V, transmission zone 0, excluding VAT — R7.39 peak, R1.85 standard, R1.23 off-peak per kWh (Eskom Schedule of Standard Prices 2026/27). Load profile measured; array and battery modelled.
10:00 – 16:00
Surplus, not export
The array peaks at 840 kW against a 200 kW load. Exported, that surplus earns a fraction of what the site pays to import energy, so it charges the battery instead of leaving the site.
17:00 – 20:00
The evening peak
Load rises again as generation collapses. This is the most expensive energy on the tariff and it is met entirely from the battery, holding notified maximum demand flat.
Architecture
A microgrid is
one controllable thing.
A microgrid is a group of interconnected loads and distributed energy resources that behaves, from the network's point of view, as a single controllable entity. Solaris is what makes that true — it is the only element that sees the tariff, the array, the state of charge, the generator and the load at the same time.
It can operate grid-connected or islanded, and transition between the two without the site noticing. Eskom becomes one input among several rather than the only one.
Solar first
Every kilowatt-hour generated on site is consumed on site before anything is imported or exported.
Storage second
The battery absorbs surplus and releases it into the windows where energy is most expensive.
Grid third
Imports are pushed into off-peak hours and held below the notified maximum demand ceiling.
Generator last
Thermal generation is an emergency resource, not a daily one. On hybrid sites fuel burn drops sharply.
Microgrid topologyControl & telemetry
Solaris sits between the distributed energy resources and the site. It measures at the point of connection, forecasts generation and load, and dispatches every resource against the tariff calendar.
Control Logic
What it is solving for.
Not a schedule. A continuously re-evaluated optimisation against the constraints that actually determine your bill.
Objective 01
Minimise energy cost
The Eskom Megaflex and municipal time-of-use calendars are loaded per site, including seasonal rate changes and weekday/Saturday/Sunday variants. Solaris moves consumption down the rate card wherever the battery has the headroom to do it.
Objective 02
Hold the demand ceiling
Notified maximum demand is charged on the highest half-hour of the month. Solaris watches the rolling demand integral and discharges pre-emptively to stop a single production event resetting your charge for the next twelve months.
Objective 03
Protect the asset
State-of-charge windows, C-rate limits, cell temperature spread and cycle budget are hard constraints. The optimiser will forgo a marginal saving rather than spend warranty life to capture it.
Objective 04
Maintain availability
A reserve floor is held back for continuity of operations. On sites where a network event stops production, that reserve is sized against the process, not against the arbitrage opportunity.
Objective 05
Forecast, then commit
Generation and load are forecast a day ahead and re-forecast intraday. A cloudy morning changes the overnight charging decision made the night before.
Objective 06
Stay compliant
Export limits, power factor targets and grid-code obligations at the point of connection are enforced as constraints, so the plant never optimises itself out of compliance.
Capabilities
Everything the plant
can be asked to do.
Solaris ships with the full control stack enabled from day one. Your plant is configured for the value it captures today — and it is already capable of the rest, so a change in tariff structure or grid code is a configuration change, not a new procurement.
01
Energy arbitrage
Buying and storing energy when it is cheap, releasing it when it is expensive, against the loaded tariff calendar.
Enabled02
Peak shifting
Moving demand out of the weekday peak windows entirely: 06:00–08:00 and 17:00–20:00 in June–August, 07:00–09:00 and 18:00–21:00 the rest of the year.
Enabled03
Energy asset optimisation
Coordinating PV, storage, grid and thermal generation as one dispatchable portfolio.
Enabled04
Power factor correction
Four-quadrant conversion supplying reactive power locally, avoiding utility power-factor penalties.
Enabled05
Capacity firming
Smoothing intermittent PV output into a firm, contractable profile at the point of connection.
Enabled06
Investment deferral
Deferring a network or transformer upgrade by holding demand below the existing connection capacity.
Enabled07
Voltage support
Local voltage regulation at the point of connection, particularly on long or weak rural feeders.
Enabled08
Frequency response
Sub-second active-power response to system frequency deviation — the fastest-acting resource on any network it is connected to.
Enabled09
Flexible ramping
Absorbing and delivering steep ramps that thermal plant cannot follow, smoothing the connection point in both directions.
EnabledSouth Africa's electricity market is opening — wheeling, trading and network services are all moving. Every system we deliver is specified so that when those revenues become available to you, the plant is already able to earn them.
Integration & Reporting
It has to talk
to what you run.
Solaris integrates into the site SCADA, building management and metering you already run rather than replacing it. Open protocols, revenue-grade metering at the point of connection, and cell-level telemetry all the way down.
| Interfaces | |
|---|---|
| Site SCADA | Modbus TCP / RTU |
| Utility / protection | IEC 60870-5-104, IEC 61850 |
| Local bus | CAN, RS-485 |
| Remote link | Ethernet, 4G/LTE failover |
| Metering | Revenue-grade at point of connection |
| Telemetry depth | Cell-level voltage & temperature |
Live dispatch viewReal-time flows across solar, storage, grid and generator
Web / mobile
Tariff reconciliationModelled vs actual cost per rate period, reconciled to your Eskom bill
Monthly
Asset healthState of health, cycle count, temperature spread and augmentation forecast
Continuous
Availability reportingPerformance against the guarantee in the PPA or maintenance agreement
Contractual
Model Your Site
Your profile, dispatched.
Send us twelve months of interval data and your tariff schedule and we will run this same model against your site — hour by hour, at your rates, with the storage sized to your peaks.