A home battery helps you become more sustainable and save on costs.
A home battery stores solar energy that you don’t immediately use. Why is that interesting? The two main benefits are related to sustainability and cost savings.
Get more out of your solar panels with a home battery
Renewable energy is a crucial part of the energy transition. We need to use less energy and generate the energy we do use in a sustainable way. One way to achieve this is through solar panels. Do you have solar panels at home or perhaps at your business? Then consider a home battery (also known as a residential battery) to store the solar energy. In this article, we will tell you more about such a battery, focusing on the advantages in terms of sustainability and cost savings.
The yield of your solar panels and a home battery
Last year, the yield of solar panels skyrocketed due to an extremely sunny spring. Some days even had an excess of solar energy, especially around noon. However, that’s not the time when most energy is consumed. Therefore, it’s interesting to store your self-generated energy in a battery. This way, during peak demand moments when supply is lower, you can still use the surplus energy you produced.
What is a home battery and what does it do?
Your solar panels generate electricity for you. Chances are that you can’t use all of that electricity yourself, and you may also need electricity when the sun is not shining. To make the most of your self-generated solar energy, you store it in a home battery (also known as a residential battery) to use at a later time. This allows you to use green power not only during the day but also during peak hours or when the sun isn’t shining. As a result, you’ll need minimal (or even no) electricity from your energy supplier.
A brief explanation of how a home battery works
An article about the two main benefits of home batteries wouldn’t be complete without briefly discussing how the device works. A battery is connected to your energy system, which includes your solar panels. The installation of our smart battery is straightforward. If you opt for such a smart battery, the device determines when to use energy from your solar panels, when to store the energy, and when to feed the energy back to the grid. You don’t have to worry about the device; the smart software works completely automated.
How a home battery helps you become more sustainable
How effective is such a battery? In other words, how much more green energy can you use yourself? Energy generated by your solar panels is used as much as possible. Any surplus is stored in your battery, allowing you to make the most of your self-produced sustainable energy source. Home batteries increase the utilization of self-generated solar power up to 80% maximum. That means you’ll need to buy much less (gray) electricity from your energy supplier.
Optimizing your own consumption with a home battery
For comparison, without a home battery, you only use about 30 to 50% of the solar energy generated by your solar panels. The rest is fed back to the electricity grid. With a home battery, you can roughly double your consumption of your self-generated solar energy, reaching a maximum of 80%, as mentioned earlier. Only when your battery is empty will you draw electricity from the grid. This way, you optimize your own consumption and save money.
A home battery makes you less dependent on your energy supplier
By reducing the need to purchase (gray) electricity from your energy supplier, you lessen your dependence on them. Remember our earlier example: without a battery, you use an average of about 30 to 50% of your solar panel’s electricity. With a battery, you increase that usage to 60-80%, which means you need to buy less electricity. In other words, storing your own solar power is a significant step toward self-sufficiency.
How a home battery helps you save money
By buying less (gray) electricity from your energy supplier, you naturally save on your energy bill. But with a smart home battery, you can save even more. Our smart battery uses the stored energy at the best times, such as during expensive peak hours. It also charges when electricity prices are low or even negative. Any surplus energy is offered to your energy supplier at the most favorable times. With our smart battery, you triple your savings on your energy bill.
Good to know: You can still use a battery even if you don’t have solar panels. In that case, the device can store electricity from your energy supplier when prices are low and use it when prices are high.
Payback time: Is a home battery worth the investment?
As a home battery is a relatively costly investment, you’d want to know if it’s worth it. As explained above, our home battery helps you save money in various ways. The amount you save will likely increase in the future, especially when the net metering policy is phased out, which we’ll discuss below. Unfortunately, there is currently no subsidy available for home batteries. However, more and more parties, including grid operator Liander, advocate for such subsidies. Home batteries also play a significant role in relieving overloaded energy grids, which is beneficial for grid operators.
The end of net metering and the home battery
As we’ve shown in this article, our smart battery already helps you save considerably. When the net metering policy ends, a home battery will become even more attractive. At that point, there will be a significant difference between the low revenue from selling excess energy back to the grid and the high costs of purchasing electricity from your supplier. Using as much of your self-generated energy as possible will be even more beneficial.
Want to know more about our smart home batteries? Feel free to contact us!
