The majority of energy used in homes is during the morning rush and the evening when it is dark. This is the complete opposite time of day to when solar panels are generating electricity. This is where home battery storage can really make a difference.
Cover Morning and Evening Demand First
First your panels charge the battery during the day. In the morning and evening when your home’s consumption peaks your home battery provides power. This can be early morning before your solar panels start to generate electricity and later in the evening when cooking and lighting increases your home’s consumption. A typical home battery will have a capacity of between 5 kWh and 15 kWh and will be more than sufficient to cover these two occasions when you can avoid using power from the grid entirely.
Handle Cloudy Days Before Calling on the Grid
On overcast days the panels will still be able to generate power, which will be used to charge the battery. This means that the battery will use the power that has been generated by the panels before resorting to drawing power from the grid. The battery will draw power from the grid once it has been completely charged and all of the stored power has been used. This means that even on the dullest of Herefordshire days, the battery will delay the time at which power is drawn from the grid.
Use Time-of-Use Tariffs to Your Advantage
Different time-of-use tariffs are charged at different times, usually in the late afternoon and evening, and can be many times more expensive than normal tariffs. If a battery is charged then it means that you can run on the stored electricity generated by your solar panels during these expensive time slots instead. For Solar Battery Storage Hereford see https://www.precisiongreenenergy.co.uk/renewables/solar-battery-storage/hereford/
Keep Surplus Power at Home
Most of the power generated by a solar panel system is used by the home where it is generated. However, there are times when the system generates more electricity than is required at that time. Excess power that is not used by the home is automatically exported to the grid and normally sold at a low tariff, e.g. 4p/kWh or 5p/kWh. If your home is equipped with a solar battery storage system then surplus electricity is stored in the battery to be used at a later time. For solar battery storage in Hereford, the installers will set up the system to prioritise self-consumption, thus only excess electricity above that which is required by the home is exported to the grid.
Let the Grid Be a Backup, Not Your Default Supplier
The grid will still be connected to and available to supply electricity to your home when the battery is running low. However, as previously stated, the aim of using solar battery storage is to reduce your reliance on the grid. For households who install solar battery storage, it has been shown that over the course of a year, the amount of time that a household will use to draw electricity from the grid can be reduced by more than half.
