Why You Should Consider a Solar Energy Storage System

Solar energy storage systems pair with solar PV to store the electricity your system generates and to provide backup power during outages. When paired with solar, battery systems offer significant savings and qualify for investment tax credits.

These battery systems are ideal for solar owners in states that don’t offer net metering or where utility rate structures reduce the value of energy credits. Here are some of the benefits:

Reliability

Solar energy storage systems gather electricity that has been generated by your solar panels and store it for use later on – for example, during power outages. These devices differ in their energy capacity (the total amount of energy that can be stored – often measured in kilowatt-hours or megawatt-hours) and their power capacity (the maximum amount of electricity they can release at one time, typically expressed in kW).

Solar battery storage technology is currently available for businesses to install along with their new or existing solar panels. These batteries can help to alleviate power outages that may occur during harsh weather conditions or at night, when the sun isn’t shining.

Energy storage can also be used to provide other grid services, including frequency regulation and capacity support. Methods and models for evaluating these benefits are developing rapidly, in response to reduced reliance on fossil fuel baseload generation, increased intermittent renewable investment, and expansion of distributed energy resources.

The colored circles in Fig. 2 show the 39-year average estimated reliability (%) of a mix of solar and wind for 18 major countries (4 from each of Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas and two from Oceania), according to the level of excess annual generation and the capacity of energy storage relative to electricity demand (0, 3, or 12 h in the first row of panels). Linear fits to these data indicate that systems with no energy storage tend to have dozens of long-duration gaps each year, and the number of gaps decreases as energy storage is added.

Energy Self-Sufficiency

A Solar energy storage system will enable your home to produce more of its own electricity, which means lowering your dependence on the grid. This can help you to avoid costly time-of-use rates during peak demand periods, while also acquiring resiliency for the times when your utility may experience prolonged power outages.

Solar panels can only generate electricity when they are exposed to sunlight. If you do not have a form of battery energy storage, once the sun goes down, your electricity generation will stop and you will need to use energy from the grid until Solar energy storage system sunrise. Adding a solar energy storage system will ensure that you will always have enough power to meet your needs.

This research analyzes the possibility of solar energy self-production at urban level through its environmental implications. This is done by performing a physical characterization of building rooftops using LiDAR and Cadastral data. Results are disaggregated by urban morphologies and can be visualized in maps.

Solar thermal systems can produce 70 % of an inhabitant’s DHW energy consumption. In order to determine the self-production capacity of solar thermal energy for DHW, it was necessary to define the annual amount of electricity required per inhabitant: 1503 kWh.

Reduced Dependence on the Grid

With a solar energy storage system, you can produce enough power to meet most or all of your electricity needs. This reduces or eliminates your dependence on fossil fuels and the traditional grid, and provides a backup during power outages.

Energy storage systems are available with a variety of energy capacity and power capacity, allowing them to be used for different tasks. Short-term storage can help smooth out brief generation disruptions like passing clouds, while longer-term storage can provide supply for days or weeks in the event of a grid outage.

Home batteries that store excess solar production for consumption at night and on cloudy days offer a good way to increase self-consumption and reduce grid dependence, but are only financially viable for a small percentage of households. The Battery Estimator on your Solar Analytics Dashboard can show you if it makes sense for your household to install a battery.

For homeowners in states with net metering Solar energy storage system policies that don’t adequately compensate them for the energy they feed to the grid, adding a battery can be the best way to capture the value of your solar energy. Using a battery to shift consumption from peak demand periods can also help you avoid paying expensive time-of-use rates that utilities charge when electricity is in high demand and scarce.

Increased Flexibility

Solar energy systems without storage can work fine, but a battery is the best way to guarantee you will have power at all times. If your home or business is connected to the grid and uses a solar system, most systems will include some sort of energy storage as part of the installation.

Batteries can be recharged in the daytime by the solar panels and at night are used to offset electricity demand. This allows your solar system to avoid peak time rates and save you money. Peak rates occur on hot summer afternoons and evenings, when electricity usage is highest as people return home and turn on air conditioning and other energy-intensive appliances.

Battery storage can also help to alleviate time-of-use charges from utilities. Some of these utility charges are based on the hour of the peak demand and can be much higher than off-peak prices. By storing low-cost energy from the solar panels in the batteries during peak rates, you can avoid these expensive TOU charges and reduce your overall cost of power.

In addition to all of these benefits, battery systems provide backup power in case the grid goes down for any reason, including wildfires, hurricanes and other natural disasters. Some homeowners purchase energy storage just to be prepared for this possibility, and the batteries can continue working even if the solar system itself is turned off as a safety precaution.