Table Of Contents
Storing Solar
Understanding how solar battery storage works is essential, considering there is increasing interest in energy storage technologies. Knowing how solar energy storage systems work with solar panels and the rest of your home or business will make it easy for you to integrate this system into your home and manage it effectively.
What Is The Definition Of A Solar Battery?
A solar battery is a device created to store electricity for later use, allowing you to keep appliances running during a power outage. You get to use the solar energy you generate at home, saving you money on electricity. They're known as "deep cycle batteries" because of their ability to store and discharge a large amount of electricity compared to an automobile battery.
How Solar Batteries Function
Solar batteries store energy for later use in their most advanced form. If you have a home solar panel system, you should be aware that solar panels use sunlight to generate electricity.
Electricity is of two types: AC (Alternating current) and DC (Direct current). An inverter is used to convert AC into DC and vice versa.
- Most gadgets you use in your home require AC current to work.
- Your batteries store any excess electricity not consumed by your equipment.
- When the sun goes down, the stored energy in your battery system powers your appliances.
How Batteries And Solar Panels Work Together
It's helpful to brush up on the basics of solar panel systems to understand how solar energy storage and solar panels work together. Most people typically use a 'grid-tied' net-metered system when installing solar panels. This implies that if your solar panels produce more electricity than you require, you can channel the excess to the grid; conversely, if you need more electricity than your panels produce, you can draw electricity from the grid.
Net metering allows you to run your electricity metre backwards when putting excess energy onto the grid and forwards when pulling energy from the grid. Your utility will invoice you the charge appropriately.
The alternative is to store any excess you generate during the day rather than channelling it to the grid. After that, you can draw from your solar battery rather than the grid when you need electricity after the sun has set.
What Is Round Trip Efficiency?
The round-trip efficiency of your energy storage system (battery + inverter) is a system-level metric that assesses how successfully it converts and stores electricity. Any electrical operation entails losses; thus, whether you convert electricity from direct current (DC) into alternating current (AC) or put electricity into another battery and then withdraw it, you'll lose some kWh.
A solar battery's round-trip efficiency tells you how many units of power you'll receive out of it for every unit you put into it.
Backup Power Is Provided Via Batteries
Your storage system can function "off-grid" since the combination of solar and storage will create a little energy island on your property. But you will still be linked to the grid. You'll be able to keep your lights on even if there's a power outage caused by severe weather or a utility shutoff.
There are two things to keep in mind regarding backup power. First, even if it's a sunny day, a solar panel system without a battery will leave you without any electricity in the event of a power outage. Your solar panel system will shut down to prevent electricity from being sent over transmission lines while utility workers work to restore power.
What Does A Solar-Plus-Storage System Offer?
You'll be able to draw power from either the grid or your battery system when it's fully charged once you combine a solar panel system with a battery storage system. This has two important outcomes:
Reduced utility rates
Combining batteries with panels can assist you in avoiding paying expensive utility rates by allowing you to draw power from your battery rather than the grid. There are two ways in which batteries can accomplish this.
You can draw power from your battery during peak hours when it costs more to use mains electricity. This is especially vital if you have a time-of-use or other time-varying rate.
Decreased monthly demand charge
A battery system can help you minimise your demand charge each month. This saves you money, particularly if you have a demand charge on your electric bill, which is more common for commercial and industrial businesses than for households.
What Is The Chemistry Of Solar Batteries?
The most prevalent form of battery system on the market these days for personal energy storage is a lithium-ion battery. Lithium-ion batteries get their name because they work by transporting lithium ions through an electrolyte within the battery. Moving lithium ions from an anode to a cathode creates free electrons or electrons that have been liberated from lithium atoms because ions are particles that have received or lost an electron.
The accumulation of these free electrons is how batteries charge and store electricity in the end. The flow of lithium ions is reversed when you discharge the electricity stored in the battery, making the process repeatable: lithium-ion batteries have many charge and discharge cycles, up to 5000, over the life of a battery, but note that it varies.
Multiple lithium-ion battery cells are combined with complicated power electronics to regulate the overall performance and safety of the battery system in residential battery storage systems. Lithium-ion batteries come in a variety of sizes and chemistries. Each has its own set of benefits, ranging from increased power density to extended battery life.
Lithium-ion batteries aren't the only form of battery utilised in energy storage applications at home, in businesses, or in utilities. Other batteries use similar principles to store energy, but each has its own advantages and disadvantages.
Working On Solar Batteries At Your Home
Solar batteries are an essential component of a home's energy self-sufficiency. We'll suppose that the battery is connected to a solar panel system rather than being a stand-alone battery for this example.
Capturing solar energy
The solar array on the roof captures solar energy to start the process. The visible light is converted into an electrical current when the sun shines on the panels.
The DC electricity produced by the solar system can either be converted to AC power or kept as DC power. This depends on whether the solar system employs an AC or DC battery.
Recharging the battery
Solar energy is typically generated to be used in the home. The electricity generated by the panels will be fed directly into the house's main electrical panel, powering everything from TVs and lights to air conditioning and electric vehicle charging. Solar panels can often create more energy than a home needs at the time.
Consider a wonderful spring day when the weather is mild, and the residents aren't using much electricity, but the panels produce a significant amount of energy. The solar system's production can easily exceed the home's requirements in these circumstances. Without a battery, the excess energy is fed to the grid via a net metering system.
This excess electricity would "spin the meter backwards" and provide a bill credit to the homeowner. This bill credit can be used to offset power consumed from the grid when the system isn't covering all of the home's needs (like at night).
The other option is to store the surplus electricity generated by the solar system in batteries. The quantity of excess energy produced, which is dependent on factors such as the size of the solar system and the current electricity demand in the residence, determines how quickly the battery charges.
Discharging the battery
The stored energy can be used in the residence later after the battery has been charged with additional solar energy. There are two main reasons why a homeowner might want to store additional energy for later use. The first reason is if the home has no power due to a grid outage.
The battery system's backup gateway disconnects the house from the grid when a power loss happens. It activates the battery, providing power to the circuits it's been linked to right away. In this regard, the battery will work similarly to a traditional generator, except these batteries are significantly superior to generators in every manner.
The second motivation to store energy for later use is to take advantage of utility companies' time-of-use (TOU) rate arrangements. Many utility providers are switching customers to TOU plans because they better represent variations in wholesale power pricing throughout the day.
The extra energy produced by the panels during the day is less valuable than the power drawn from the grid at night under a TOU pricing plan. As a result, by avoiding peak power prices in the evening, a solar battery can help homes save more money.
DC Vs. AC Solar Batteries
While AC (Alternating Current) is used in houses, all batteries require DC (Direct Current) to charge. That's why your laptop cord has that big box on it: to convert AC power from the wall into DC electricity to charge the battery. What exactly is an AC battery if all batteries require DC electricity to charge?
An AC battery accepts incoming AC power and converts it to DC power, which is then used to charge the battery, thanks to a built-in inverter. The inverter transforms the DC power from the battery to AC when the battery supplies power to the house, which is then fed to home appliances. The Tesla Powerwall, like other modern solar batteries, is an AC battery.
The most significant benefit of AC batteries is that they can be utilised with any solar system. They can be used with any solar inverter, including microinverters, because they can accept AC output from any system. This makes them highly adaptable and simple to integrate with current solar systems.
On the other hand, DC batteries do not have an inverter. As a result, they must be charged from DC power directly. This necessitates using a specialist inverter that can transmit DC power directly from the solar panels to the battery without having to convert it to AC first. The DC electricity from the battery is sent into an external solar inverter when the battery needs to power the house.
The inverter converts DC power into AC power, which is then used to power the home. The most significant benefit of DC batteries is they offer better round-trip efficiency. Approximately 5% of the power is lost to heat when electricity is reversed from DC to AC (or vice versa). As a result, the more times the power is inverted; the more total energy is lost.
DC batteries are more efficient because they do not invert electricity as many times as AC batteries. DC batteries are also less expensive as they don't feature an inverter system.
Solar Battery Storage Done Right
Solar batteries store excess solar energy and allow it to be utilised when it is most beneficial to the homeowner, such as during a power outage or to save money on the electric bill. So, which solar battery is the best? It's difficult to say.
The optimum battery system for you will be determined by various factors, including the size of your home, the characteristics of your solar system, and what you want to get out of an energy storage system. If you have a big house with a lot of gadgets, you'll want a high-capacity battery system that can keep pumping out power for hours.
A smaller battery with excellent battery integration can be the best option cost-wise if you're on a budget and want to maximise the efficiency of your solar energy system. As such, be on the lookout for the best solar energy provider in your locality to assist you in choosing the correct solar battery for your personal home or business needs.