{"id":43516,"date":"2021-03-22T15:37:09","date_gmt":"2021-03-22T05:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/?p=43516"},"modified":"2025-12-18T13:28:30","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T03:58:30","slug":"catch-solar-relay-ships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/catch-solar-relay-ships\/","title":{"rendered":"Catch Solar Relay: Load Diversion For Local Grid Stability"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Catch

A properly configured Catch Solar Relay can help increase your solar energy self-consumption and individually make a small contribution towards grid stability.<\/p><\/div>\n

Australian solar owners: you now have a new option to put your self-consumption on autopilot while helping both stabilise the grid and enabling more of your neighbours to install solar power systems.<\/p>\n

Catch Power is finally shipping its much anticipated multi-load Catch Solar Relay<\/a>, so SolarQuotes caught up with the Glen Innes company\u2019s co-founders Scott Young and Jason De Jong to chat about the device.<\/p>\n

Catch Power is already a local success story, with 4,000 units of its Green CATCH product, which diverts excess solar energy production to water heating. Catch Power contacted us after reading about the<\/a> Paldin system<\/a> that uses air conditioning as the target diversion load.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s first two products, Blue CATCH and Green CATCH, had the consumer in mind, but designer De Jong said the company wanted to add other loads to the roster – because that would expand households\u2019 contribution to stabilising the grid.<\/p>\n

The Catch Solar Relay is a unit that doesn\u2019t focus just on water heaters, but adds appliances such as air conditioners, pool pumps, water pumps, lighting circuits, fans and underfloor heating to the list.<\/p>\n

Catch Power’s Focus<\/h2>\n

De Jong and Young told SolarQuotes the big picture has to be the motivation for everything they do. De Jong said if the fundamental issue – decarbonising the economy – isn\u2019t the fundamental reason they design something, the solutions aren\u2019t right.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat underpins every waking moment of the day isn\u2019t the electronics, it\u2019s the fundamental requirement to decarbonise the economy\u201d, De Jong said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cOur focus is making sure we can transition as fast and hard as we can.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While there are disputes about the degree to which solar-driven voltage rise is constraining the network today (we discussed UNSW\u2019s research into the causes of voltage rise <\/a>here), there\u2019s no doubt that it\u2019s going to be a growing roadblock to new household solar power uptake – hence the renewed attention on using local consumption to make use of the excess power. That\u2019s better than having consumers trying to send unwanted energy to the network and having their inverters shut down to protect the network.<\/p>\n

Catch believes more than 80% of what\u2019s now exported could be redirected to self-consumption, which would go a long way to relieve the pressure on the network and enabling further renewable deployment.<\/p>\n

\"Catch

A simple approach to load diversion: the Catch Solar Relay<\/p><\/div>\n

De Jong told us Catch Power wanted a system that could be as autonomous as possible – it should respond to a local signal rather than waiting for an instruction from some kind of centralised system.<\/p>\n

Voltage – the notional 230V the network delivers to the household – is the obvious local signal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need devices that understand more about what\u2019s required to maintain a stable network, rather than devices that just respond to central control.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Macro Versus Micro<\/h2>\n

De Jong said at the macro level, the important signal of network health is frequency – which is why FCAS (Frequency Control Ancillary Services) is the service that delivers such handy revenue to the Tesla-powered Hornsdale Power Reserve.<\/p>\n

Frequency matters at the household level, but De Jong said if a household is observing significant frequency drift, there\u2019s something seriously wrong at the macro level.<\/p>\n

Voltage trends, on the other hand, tell you what\u2019s going on more locally.<\/p>\n

\u201cMeasuring and interpreting voltage seems like a simple concept, but what you\u2019re looking for is \u2026 how is the voltage changing over time?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you carry out detailed monitoring at the household level, he said, the instantaneous voltage is all over the shop – but with that detailed monitoring, you can also see voltage changing over time, which is what matters in making power diversion decisions.<\/p>\n

De Jong stated with the smarts to behave autonomously:<\/p>\n

\u201cunknown to each device, their actions are collectively working to support the network.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There\u2019s a small bit of secret sauce involved, because if all the devices responded identically and simultaneously to network conditions, there would be a huge overshoot. You don\u2019t want 100 air conditioners<\/a> (for example) starting in the same second because voltage started rising.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo they [the Catch Relay devices – SQ] don\u2019t all act at the same time – a single device might ramp up a load but not all devices at once.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As well as a voltage sensor and the ability to power up different loads in the consumer\u2019s home, the relay has a current transformer to measure import\/export, also to inform decision-making.<\/p>\n

Loading Up The Local Network<\/h2>\n

An important aspect of the Catch Solar relay, one that won\u2019t matter to the individual but could make it attractive to network operators, is that a network of household relays \u201cbelow the transformer\u201d is effective even if not all the households have solar panels.<\/p>\n

Taking just the water heater as the connected load, in a white paper provided to SolarQuotes the company describes the operation like this:<\/p>\n

\u201cCATCH Solar Relays do not rely on any form of communication to coordinate ramp up and ramp down. CATCH Solar Relay uses a combination of inherent differences in the electrical wiring between each installation, and statistically distributed \u2018switch on\u2019 and \u2018switch off\u2019 times. The combination of these two things means once an intervention event is detected the loads are gently ramped up or down.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If Catch Power can get the relay widely deployed, Young says it could \u201cfree up\u201d as much as 38% of the solar generation in the network.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you can take back 38% of all solar in the network, it means a whole lot more solar can go in,\u201d Young said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s important for a lot of reasons – we have international obligations to meet, there\u2019s an electorate that\u2019s hungry for solar, and the environment needs it. Coming up with technologies that will allow more solar to go into the network is a great idea\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And De Jong pointed out having a significant percentage of available solar power operating self-consumed loads acts as a strategic reserve for the network.<\/p>\n

\u201cSay there\u2019s a failure in the system, this energy reserve is built into the NEM – so there\u2019s frequency variation, the hot water services turn off, and flood the network with needed energy.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Australian solar owners: you now have a new option to put your self-consumption on autopilot while helping both stabilise the grid and enabling more of your neighbours to install solar power systems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":48655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[509],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-solar-innovations","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCatch Solar Relay: Load Diversion For Local Grid Stability<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Catch Solar Relay is now shipping - 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