The solar panel was designed in-house specifically for use in heavily populated areas, as well as outdoors. Since it doesn’t require a frame or safety glass, it’s much lighter than comparable systems, yet still tough. The top layer is made from ETFE, a plastic, which does not react with UV light, ensuring decades of use.

Because the solar panel is both, semi-flexible and foldable, it is perfect to adjust to various surfaces. Hang it on a wall, a fence, a balcony railing, a tree or a shed, it’s ridiculously easy using the eyelets.

Installation is done by simply clamping the sensors around the mains, as seen in below picture, no tools required. The Power Meter does require an external power supply and can be plugged into any outlet.

Avoid any chance of touching the plug prongs with this additional safety device.

You don’t have to have a full-blown solar array on large plots of land. With classic systems, you’re paying for way more than just the solar panels and battery cells. Any offer you get will include added costs for the installation, the roof mounting system, electrical works and many more. The cost of our system is transparent – there are no added fees.

Check out the chapter on cost savings for detailed information, at the bottom of the page.

The Smart Solar Panel and the Smart Battery will work together, using WiFi, to optimally use your solar power within your home and avoid back-feeding into the public grid. This way we can ensure that you really use 100% of your electricity, while avoiding having to deal with authorities.

Simply install the solar panel using zip ties, place the battery in your home and register the devices using our app. Our AI-powered software will then create an individual charging/discharging plan using weather forecasting. Using our power meter, you’ll see how much electricity you’re using in your home and can then use that information to save money even more efficiently.

1. Unpack/unfold
2. Zip-tie the solar panel to your balcony, or screw it onto a fence…it’s up to you. We also have a nifty mount that we offer, which allows for even greater installation flexibility and even adjustments in the angle towards the sun.
3. Connect cables with snap connectors
4. Plug the Smart Solar Panel and/or the Smart Battery into any standard power outlet (using our Safety Gate Adapter) – production will start immediately.
5. Clip the power meter into the circuit breaker box (no tools needed).
6. Register all devices with barcodes in our free App.

Whether it’s music or photography equipment – our daily lives are more and more dependent on electricity – privately and professionally. Let us help you save power and money at home, but use the battery also for power on-the-go. Charge multiple batteries at home, so you can leave at least one to keep saving money, while up to three additional batteries can be charged for other uses, as well.

When you’re ready to go off-grid, simply disconnect the panel from its inverter, grab the battery out of its smart base and take them with you. Our panel folds up to its quarter size and only weighs about 18 pounds (8kg).

Be prepared without having to buy an additional device. Whether you need emergency power in your home or outdoors, our solar panel + battery combo is a sophisticated partner in need. We’ve designed almost all components of the CraftStrom ecosystem in-house to ensure maximum benefit. 

You can use the solar panel (without the inverter) and the battery (without its base) by connecting them directly to one-another. This means that the solar panel and battery are optimally balanced. Charging the 1kWh battery directly from the solar panel takes only 4 hours. You can continuously power important appliances and devices, such as refrigerators or medical respiratory ventilators. 

But what are your financial benefits?

The first benefit is realized when buying our products, as you save on installation, operational and balancing system costs. This way we can offer you lightweight solar panels for extra mobility, but at the low price of 2.49 $/Watt, which is below the current average price for solar installations. You do not have to install enough solar panels to offset your entire electricity consumption – every bit helps!

Customers in Southern States or countries will be able to pay off their panels in as little as 5 years. 

Electricity Price Peak Times

For our customers with variable electricity prices, this is a common issue: Extremely high electricity prices are usually scheduled in the afternoon, as power demand increases and solar output decreases.

Total Benefit of Solar+Battery

To counter this effect, our Smart Battery ensures that your electricity production is spread-out throughout the day, especially in the afternoons and evenings. You can even tell it to buy cheap electricity from the grid and discharge that cheap electricity in the late morning, effectively giving you two cycles – one arbitrage and one with your own solar production.

The Smart Base is the brains and communication hub for the battery. It contains our proprietary inverter with dynamic charging and discharging. This means that, depending on your electricity production or consumption, the battery will adjust the power input or output. Below 

Design has been an integral part in this project from start to finish. We have developed every part in our product suite and all the necessary design genres came into play. Industrial design to provide for a visually stunning experience, process design to look for the simplest but most stable implementation of new technologies , UX/UI design to assure a smooth interaction with our app, allowing you to control the power flow intuitively. Graphic design to be able to explain this complex project in the most simple way. All handled in house so we can own the entire process from the first idea, to the delivered product!

CraftStrom is a startup with a diverse team from various backgrounds, such as mechanical and electrical engineering, software development, energy economics, law and marketing. We have developed all components in house, such as the:

• Solar panel

• Bi-directional battery inverter with dynamic power management

• Portable AC 120/230 V inverter with high-speed wireless charging

• Battery management system

• Safety Gate Adapter (patent pending)

• Power Meter 

• Wifi modules

• As well as all firmware and software packages

Where are we on Production?

The Smart Solar Panel, the Smart Battery and all safety products have undergone multiple iterations of prototypes and are ready for mass production. After our successful Kickstarter campaign, we will now commence with the production of tools still needed for the Smart Battery. 

The Smart Solar Panel

Our 320W Foldable & Semiflexible Solar Panel is being produced at a supplier’s factory in China, where it requires a multitude of stages to manufacture our panels. While we won’t go into great detail here, here are some stages:

• Quality check of raw PV cells
• Cutting of PV cells (to achieve the desired Voltage)
• Preparation of PV cells
• Soldering of PV cells
• Quality check of soldered PV cell-array
• Layering of fabric, plastics, cell-array and ETFE
• Lamination
• Cutting of the solar panel, mounting holes and stamping of eyelets

The 350W Smart Inverter with WiFi is also manufactured at a supplier’s certified factory, where the housing is combined with the proprietary PCBA and our WiFi module that allows you to connect to the inverter from anywhere in the world. 

The Smart Battery

We are producing our Smart Battery at a specialised assembly company, which allows us to outsource, yet retain our IP. It requires hundreds of parts, many of which we extrude from plastic, though the main battery and offgrid inverter shells are made from highest grade Aluminium. We wanted the feel of the battery to reflect the sturdiness, which is why we chose to work with more metal than the competition. PCBAs are outsourced, as well as the manufacture of the battery cells. All parts are then combined to make three main components:

1. The Battery – contains the battery cells, the Battery Management System (also proprietary), MPPT solar charger (for offgrid charging), USB connection ports and connection regulators.
2. The Smart Base – holds the Dynamic Power Inverter, which allows you to regulate power input and output, our WiFi module and connection PCBA that regulates the expansion batteries.
3. The Offgrid Inverter – Apart from the inverter PCBA, this also contains the wireless charing pad and regulator.

Safety Devices

The Power Meter and Safety Gate Adaptor are both made from high-quality and thick-walled plastics and produced in our own workshop in Shenzhen.

#AnOpenPlatform

We are developing CraftStrom to be an open platform for all you hobbyists and craftspeople who want to extend your CraftStrom system and integrate it with your other home automation projects. The data that you collect from your solar power generation and battery charge / discharge patterns in your CraftStrom account will be accessible to you through a HTTP REST API. This will allow you to download it and use it for other purposes and extend it in your DIY projects. We love open source, we use it in our work and we plan to open source a few of CraftStrom’s key components as well to allow the community to build an ecosystem around our products and make them interoperable with other home automation devices. We can’t wait to see what you will build!

We are currently still manufacturing in China, until we can break out of the startup phase and develop our own manufacturing capabilities. We have two wonderful team members from Shenzhen, who aid in production and logistics. 

Quality management for us begins in the design phase, where all components are developed using only tier 1 parts. Since we have developed all components, we can guarantee quality from the start. 

Solar panel design and production, especially, are critical stages in our value chain. It begins with choosing the right solar cells, base and cover materials and ends in the continuous checks undertaken during the production process.

Are there incentives for making your home energy efficient by installing alternative energy equipment?

A. Yes, the residential energy efficient property credit allows for a credit equal to the applicable percent of the cost of qualified property. Qualifying properties are solar electric property, solar water heaters, geothermal heat pumps, small wind turbines and fuel cell property. Only fuel cell property is subject to a limitation, which is $500 with respect to each half kilowatt of capacity of the qualified fuel cell property. Generally, this credit for alternative energy equipment terminates for property placed in service after December 31, 2021.

The applicable percentages are:

• In the case of property placed in service after December 31, 2016, and before January 1, 2020, 30 percent.
• In the case of property placed in service after December 31, 2019, and before January 1, 2021, 26 percent.
•  In the case of property placed in service after December 31, 2020, and before January 1, 2022, 22 percent.

More information can be found at: 

https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2020/01…

We enable our customers to become an active part of the fight against climate change. Sustainability and an environmentally friendly way of doing business are at the heart of everything we do here at CraftStrom.

It all starts with the reduction of the CO2 footprint of each user. The electricity produced by our smart system is 100% green. Also, the battery will charge directly from the grid or during low power usage times when more green electricity is available. With a full battery, it makes CO2 free electricity available at peak times when traditional, more CO2 intense power plants would have to cover the peak in the grid.

Our products are designed and manufactured to be long lasting and to minimize the impact on the environment. It starts with the materials we chose. For example, we opted for a lamination layer that will sustain UV-rays without “blinding” the cells. We, therefore, increase the solar panel’s life span and conversion capacity. Another example is our design of the battery system. The battery is not be placed outside but inside the home and therefore not exposed to large temperature fluctuations. This will increase its life span of the load cycles significantly and ultimately save the usage of precious materials.

To avoid environmental impact by inappropriate handling of batteries, we offer a recycling program for our customers. We will recycle returned batteries and use materials to manufacture new ones.

Lastly, we at CraftStrom do not only enable our customers to be part of a brighter future but we also have our social impact pledge on top: 10% of our profits go into climate change initiatives and not for profit programs for disadvantaged communities here in the USA and the rest of the world.

We are a dedicated team of industry professionals with over 40 years of experience from a wide variety of fields. Our team consists of multiple engineers from the fields of electrical and mechanical engineering, software development, with specializations in battery development, energy efficiency, and machine learning. Industrial design, energy economics, marketing, and other, equally important industries round out our team. It’s the diversity in a professional experience that has helped us so far in the development of this ambitious project. This team was set up from within a group of friends, some of whom studied and worked together, meaning that we were aware of our flaws and mannerisms.

All team members have been involved in startups before, either as founders or as initial employees. Some experiences had already taken us into the solar and battery industries, with valuable experience gained in the manufacture and certification of batteries.

But we also bring the experience of failure, as one startup from within our group failed to gain any traction after considerable amounts of time and efforts were spent to realize a product (hardware and software). It’s this experience that we have used from the start to evaluate our ideas with customers and undertake continuous testing, as we go along.

Please be aware that, due to the Covid-19 crisis, we might see some delays in shipping and customs, from China to the USA and Europe. We are working hard with our freight forwarder in Hong Kong to plan ahead and anticipate any issues. Shipping will be done via air freight and sea freight. We will ship using air shipment as much as possible, to ensure quick delivery to you.

Shipping rates are currently fixed at USD/EUR 99.00 per item (subject to change and we’re scheduled to ship the Smart Panels in spring 2021) and we will cover any shipping costs above that.

Risks & Challenges

Identified risks will be certifications for the battery and the timeline to receive those. Given our experience with certifying the inverter and solar panel though, we feel confident that we have a realistic timeline.

The main risk, however, is shipping in the current Covid-19 epidemic. Shipping resources are stretched and most companies don’t have a lot of stock. We will keep you informed on this issue