Battery Storage

What is the Franklin Home Battery System?

The FranklinWH Home Battery System is a powerful and more affordable option for home backups, reduced electricity bills and more.

Last updated

October 9, 2024

Author: Matt from Currents

Learn about energy for your home or business.

The FranklinWH Home Battery System is a home battery system designed to be a sustainable way to power your home, mainly as a whole-home backup system.

This home battery system is a great solution as it can be stacked to add more batteries to increase both power output and storage capacity.

One of the most underrated aspects of a home battery like FranklinWH is its ability to make money from the grid.

The Franklin whole home battery cost is around $18,000 before tax credits and other incentives.

So while it reduces your utility bills and increases home resilience, it can also earn you $100-$800 per year depending on your location and consent to joining a virtual power plant (VPP). More on VPP earnings in this linked article.

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As a management tool for home energy, the Franklin Battery can decrease your reliance on the grid and increase your solar power usage as a whole-home backup power system.

You’ll have a way to support your household energy consumption with the Franklin Home Battery System. Remember, that not all homes are fit for solar energy, but batteries can still be a valuable asset to protecting your home and benefitting from renewables.

Let’s look more into the Franklin Home Battery System here on Currents, where we provide insight into your home’s clean energy options so you can better understand your home’s energy usage.

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What is the Franklin Home Battery System?

The home battery has a large energy storage capacity of 13.6 kWh with 10 kW peak power output and 5 kW continuous output.

The unit is AC-coupled, meaning the AC circuit breaker panel allows for retrofitting, which means your wiring can happen at ground level to add on new and existing solar panel systems.

You can also use the Franklin Home Battery System on its own, without solar, though the battery system is optimized to work with solar. If you want to add solar panels later, you could use Enphase, Sunrun, or another solar panel company.

As mentioned previously, you can stack the Franklin Home Battery System to include multiple units to increase both power output and storage capacity.

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Two FranklinWH batteries powering a whole home

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How Does the Franklin Home Battery System Work?

The Franklin Home Battery System uses a large lithium-ion home battery chemistry, specifically lithium iron phosphate (LFP), a high-power yet safe battery option.

To use the system, you’ll need both the aPower (battery) and aGate (smart controller), so two separate hardware boxes and the mobile app.

The aPower unit includes a 13.6kWh battery, a battery management system and the AC-coupled inverter. The aPower works by the battery storing energy and the inverter converting the DC electricity generated from your solar panels into usable AC electricity for your home’s appliances.

The aGate is a controller that connects all power sources.

It automatically detects grid outages with the automatic transfer switch and can transition to backup power within 16 ms. Up to 15 aPower batteries can be connected to one aGate, meaning you can purchase multiple aPower units, up to 15, to connect to your aGate for a total energy storage capacity of 204 kWh.

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All of this is then managed through the FranklinWH (Whole Home) app, an app designed for simplicity. Through the app, you can monitor your solar energy production, your home’s energy consumption, see historical energy data, and choose the battery’s operating mode, of which there are three:

Backup standby mode - where your battery is reserved for use during an outage.
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Self-consumption mode - where your battery is used to power your home, and only a small bit is reserved for outages.
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Load shifting mode - where you offset time of use rates to save money.

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What are the Benefits and Key Features of the Franklin Home Battery System?

The battery is at around the industry average for efficiency and can be drained to 0% with no harm to it due to the 100% depth of discharge rating.

Your home battery installation can be performed indoors or outdoors, with the ability to operate from -4 degrees Fahrenheit to 122 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Franklin Home Battery System has a powerful peak power output at 10 kWh, which is the measure of how much energy your battery is able to output quickly before it shuts down. It’s designed to be used to start up units like your AC unit. The company claims you can back up a four-ton AC unit using a single Franklin Home Battery.

The battery's continuous power output is a bit lower than that of its competitors at 5 kWh, whereas the others are between 7 kWh and 9 kWh.

And also different from other batteries is the Franklin Home Battery System’s warranty, which is 12 years instead of the standard 10 years. With the Franklin Home Battery System, your warranty expires once the battery hits 43 MWh, the battery’s energy throughput, or 6,000 cycles. Because the battery will deteriorate over time just like any other battery would, the company offers a warranty that guarantees a certain amount of storage capacity.

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Where are FranklinWH batteries made?

While FranklinWH is a US company based in San Francisco, CA, their batteries are manufactured in Shenzhen, China.

This is similar to Apple products which are designed in California but manufactured in China. FranklinWH is committed to producing the highest quality lithium-ion batteries on the market, perfect for homes like yours.

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FranklinWH showcasing its newest products

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Where and How Can I Buy the Franklin Home Battery System?

The Franklin whole home battery cost is around $18,000 before tax credits and other incentives.

The Franklin Home Battery System as a package combines the battery, smart controller, permitting, installation and app in one package.

Currents has installation partners who specialize in electrification projects like home batteries, and we’re committed to providing the best installation prices on the market, where they will come to your home to install it for you or you can price-shop installation elsewhere.

The Franklin Home Battery System is also eligible for the 30% federal investment tax credit and may qualify for other incentive programs, namely the Self-Generation Incentive Program in California and ConnectedSolutions programs in the Northeast.

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