By now, you’ve doubtless heard about the many benefits of having a solar system installed at your home, such as reduced energy bills, increased home value and a good number of environmental benefits, too. However, you might not be quite so familiar with battery backup, and may not know whether you need it.
Having solar battery backup can be beneficial in some circumstances, but it isn’t essential for every homeowner; to explain solar battery storage in a little more detail, here’s a quick guide:
Using solar panels without battery backup
Solar panels can easily be used without battery storage, but it means that at times of lower solar production, such as early morning and evening, you’ll need to draw power from the grid, which essentially acts as a giant energy backup system.
During the day, though (and even when it’s cloudy), your solar panels should provide more than enough energy to power your entire home, and what energy you don’t use, is sent to the grid to power your local community.
For homeowners without battery backup, they are referred to as being -grid-tied’. If you have your own battery storage, you probably won’t transfer much energy to or from the grid, instead, using your own energy to power your home.
Do you need solar battery storage?
Most homeowners can happily use a solar system without added battery storage, but there are some circumstances in which it could come in extremely useful:
If you live somewhere remote and isolated and there is no central utility grid, you’ll need battery storage to capture your solar generation for later use. If you want to have the lights on in your home during the evening when your system isn’t generating power, battery storage is essential.
However, even if none of the above apply to you as a homeowner, you may still want to be independent of the grid and use your own, clean energy, as when you do pull energy from the grid, you can’t guarantee that it hasn’t been derived from fossil fuels.
What are hybrid solar systems?
Hybrid solar systems have battery banks and grid connection combined, with the batteries set to maximize the use of your own solar power, and for use when the grid goes down.
Ultimately, if you have no pressing need for battery backup and are comfortable drawing power from the grid when you need to, you can go without it. For anyone living in an area with frequent power outages, however, the cost of solar battery storage, may well be worth it.
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