On a distribution feeder, the battery is rarely the expensive part of a storage project. The expensive parts are the concrete, the wayleave, the fence and the twelve months spent agreeing them — for a problem that is often measured in single-figure kilowatts.
That ratio is what the pole-mount line exists to change.
What the constraint actually is
Put a cabinet on the ground and you inherit a chain of obligations before any engineering starts. Somebody owns the field. Somebody has to agree a lease. Somebody has to pour a base that will take the weight, fence it against livestock and vandalism, and maintain the access track that gets a van to it.
None of that scales down. A 10 kWh installation carries almost exactly the same land and civils overhead as a 200 kWh one, which is why small grid-edge interventions so often do not happen at all.
Meanwhile, at nearly every site where the problem exists, there is already a pole. It is already the network operator's asset. It already has a route to it, and it already has the connection you want to work with at the top of it.
What we built
A sealed IP55 LiFePO4 pack and its power electronics share a galvanised strut frame that clamps directly to an existing concrete or steel pole, with a vented weather canopy over the top and lifting eyes at every corner.
| Figure | Value | | --- | --- | | Rated power | 5 kW | | Rated energy | 10 kWh, 9 kWh usable | | Nominal voltage | 51.2 V, 200 Ah, 16S1P | | Cycle life | 6,000 | | Enclosure | IP55, powder-coated galvanised steel, C4 | | Pole diameter | 150 – 320 mm | | Weight | 165 kg | | Communications | CAN, RS485, Modbus TCP, 4G, Ethernet |
Three decisions in there are worth explaining.
Natural convection, not forced air. A filtered louvre and a canopy, with the BMS derating charge and discharge at the temperature limits rather than a heater fighting them. Fans are the first thing to fail on an unattended outdoor asset, and a fan failure on a sealed enclosure is a thermal problem rather than a noise problem.
C4 corrosion class. Medium-high, which covers coastal and industrial atmospheres. A pole-mounted asset spends its whole life outdoors with no building around it, and the cost difference between specifying for that and specifying for a plant room is small at the point of manufacture and enormous seven years later.
165 kg, and lifting eyes at every corner. That figure is a design constraint, not an outcome. It is the weight one crew with standard lifting kit can bracket, lift and land in a single visit without a crane — which is the whole point of not building on the ground.
What it does not do
Four units is the parallel limit on one frame, so 40 kWh is the ceiling for a single pole. Above that the answer is a cabinet, and we will tell you so.
It also assumes the pole can take it. A survey measures diameter, condition, existing loading and access before anything is ordered, and a pole that cannot carry 165 kg plus wind load is a pole we will recommend you do not use. That conversation is cheaper before manufacture than after.
Where it is
Pre-production. Pilot units are expected in Q2 2026, and the figures above are design values from the pilot build rather than a production datasheet. Nothing here has been through a full field season yet.
If you operate feeders, masts or street-level assets and want to be part of that pilot, the pole-mount product page has the full specification and a way to register interest.