Solar Battery Storage

What is solar battery storage?

Solar battery storage stores energy from a solar PV system. PV panels take energy from the sun and convert it to electricity. A battery allows you to store energy produced from your panels and use the energy when the panels are no longer producing energy after the sun goes down.

As your house is connected to the electricity grid, your home will continue to receive electricity if your panels aren’t producing enough to meet your energy requirements. All systems are designed so that when your energy production is more than your energy consumption, the excess energy gets sent back to the grid, this is called “net-metering”. When this happens, you will get a credit on your next electricity bill which will reduce your payment amount generally around 3p per kWh. Batteries allow you to store the excess energy instead of sending it back to the grid, this makes them a great addition to their solar PV system.

How does solar battery storage work?

Most modern Solar Batteries are made of Lithium Ion, they are generally considered the best choice for your home battery. They have a longer life and are more compact than the older Lead Acid batteries although they’re more expensive compared to lead acid batteries.

What are the benefits of solar battery storage?

In simplest terms, energy storage enables electricity to be saved for later, when and where it is needed most.

By introducing more flexibility into the grid, energy storage can help integrate more solar and wind energy. It can also improve the efficiency of the grid by increasing the capacity factor of existing resources.

Energy storage can also provide power during power cuts, planned or otherwise. Solar battery storage also provides flexibility for the grid, meaning the benefits extend beyond your own personal goals.

This flexibility is critical to both reliability and resilience. As the cost of outages continues to rise, the value of enhanced reliability and improvements in resilience also rises.

What are the pros and cons of solar battery storage?