Currently, the EnPhase Microinverters, iQ6 and iQ7 can’t provide power during an outage, and any battery storage would have to be AC coupled. So even the battery goes offline in a power outage. But the new iQ8 coming soon will be able to form a micro grid during an outage. For this to work, you also need the soon to come EnPower MID (Microgrid Interconnect Device) which will isolate your system from the main grid so it can power up your house without feeding out to the grid. By adding the EnCharge-3 or EnCharge-10 battery units, the system also will store power and can provide power at night. The new iQ8 based solar panel inverters and EnCharge batteries will be compatible with the current iQ6 and iQ7 inverters, but with a few limitations. There will need to be at least one iQ8 for every iQ6 or 7 in the system, for it to be able to form a grid and keep the output stable. The EnCharge-3 battery will have 4 iQ8’s inside, and I think the EnCharge-10 will have something like 12 iQ8’s. I will be adding at least an EnCharge to my iQ7 system when they become available. Thanks to Time of Use rates, I need to shift some of my solar generated power to after 5 pm. To be able to run backup without the grid, I would need at least 2 of the EnCharge-3’s and also have to change 4 of my panels from iQ7 to iQ8 to get the 1 to 1 iQ7 to iQ8 ratio needed.
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