How much you paid per kWh of a home solar battery?

Overview:

How much does a house solar battery cost per kWh? Is a household battery backup even necessary for your photovoltaic system? You can get the solutions right here.

Depending heavily on the solar battery business, the cost of using solar batteries at home varies greatly. In the past, we stored solar energy using lead-acid batteries. The expected cost per kilowatt hour for lead-acid batteries can range from $500 to $1,000, even though the technology is fairly advanced.

Because of their higher efficiency, more capacity, and longer service life, lithium-ion solar batteries are gradually replacing lead-acid batteries as the next generation of home battery backup systems. However, because they have a higher purchase price, the expected cost per kWh for lithium-ion home solar batteries is between $800 and $1,350.

Are household solar batteries good?

Sunlight is used to produce electricity through photovoltaics. A photovoltaic system can thus only produce a significant amount of electricity when the sun is shining. This is especially fact in the morning and afternoon hours every day. In addition, spring, summer, and fall offer the highest electrical yield. Sadly, this coincides with the times when your home uses relatively little electricity. The dark winter months and the late hours have the highest electricity use. In conclusion, this indicates:

Just when you need it, the system provides too little electricity.
On the other hand, when demand is lowest, too much electricity is generated.

As a result, the lawmaker has made it possible to input any unused solar energy into the public grid. For this, you get a feed-in tariff. However, during peak demand periods, you must buy your electricity from public energy suppliers. The best option for your photovoltaic system is a battery backup system so that you can efficiently use the electricity yourself. This enables you to store surplus electricity until you use it.

Is a home solar battery system necessary for my photovoltaic system?

No, photovoltaics also functions in the absence of a battery. However, in this instance, you would lose the extra electricity produced during peak production hours for your use. Additionally, you have to buy electricity during peak demand hours from the public grid. In exchange for the electricity you supply to the grid, you are paid, but you then use the funds to make purchases. You might even spend more money on it than you would make from feeding it into the grid.

Additionally, the legal norms on which the feed-in tariff’s income is based are subject to revision or cancellation at any time. The feed-in tariff is also only paid for a 20-year term. Following that, you must sell your electricity through brokers. Currently, you can check everywhere, that solar energy costs only 3 cents per kilowatt hour on the open market.

As a result, you should make an effort to use as much of your solar energy yourself and hence purchase as little as feasible. Only a home battery storage system that is matched to your photovoltaics and your electrical requirements may help you do this.

What does the kWh value represent in terms of the storage capacity of home solar batteries?

Generally, the kilowatt hour (kWh) is a unit of electrical work measurement, that’s the same the world over. It shows how much power a device produces (electric generator) or consumes (electric consumer) in a single hour. Imagine a 100-watt (W) light bulb that burns for ten hours. The result is then:

1000 Wh, or 1 kWh, is produced by multiplying 100 W by 10 hours.

This number provides an estimate of how much electrical energy can be stored in household battery storage devices. If the capacity of such a home battery storage system is a 1-kilowatt hour, you can use the energy that is stored to run the previously described 100-watt light bulb for a complete 10 hours. The home solar battery storage must, however, be fully charged, which is the premise.

When is a home battery backup system beneficial?

Only 30% of the electricity produced by your photovoltaic system may be used by you, according to research. This figure rises from 70% to 80% when a solar home battery bank is used. The cost of a kilowatt hour produced by your solar home battery storage must not be more than the cost of a kilowatt hour obtained from the public grid to be profitable.

Solar battery bank for the home without a photovoltaic system

We use the following example values to calculate the amortization of a photovoltaic system without a solar home battery bank:

The cost of solar modules with a 5 kW peak output is $7500.

Additional expenses, such as the system’s connection, come to $800.

8300 dollars were spent on the purchase in total.

950-kilowatt hours are produced annually by solar panels with a 1 kilowatt peak output. The system’s overall yield is the 5-kilowatt peak (5 * 950 kWh = 4,750 kWh per year). This equates to a household of four’s annual electricity requirements.

You can only use roughly 30%, or 1,425-kilowatt hours, personally, as was already mentioned. The public utility is not required to sell you this much electricity. You save 427.5 dollars in annual electricity bills for 30 cents per kilowatt hour (1,425 * 0.3).

Additionally, you generate 3,325 kilowatt-hours by supplying electricity to the grid (4,750 – 1,425). Currently, a monthly percentage decline of 0.4 percent occurs in the feed-in tariff. The feed-in tariff for the month when the plant was registered and put into service is used for the 20-year subsidy period. The feed-in tariff was approximately 9 cents per kilowatt-hour at the start of 2022.

Additional

With 3,325 kWh multiplied by 0.09 euros, the feed-in tariff generates a profit of 299.25 dollars.

Therefore, a total of $726.75 in electricity bills were saved. Therefore, it would take approximately 11 years for the plant investment to pay for itself. This does not, however, account for the system’s yearly maintenance expenses.

We make the same plant-related assumptions as in the preceding sentence. The lithium-ion solar battery bank should, as a general rule, have a storage capacity equal to the power of the photovoltaic system. Consequently, our system’s 5-kilowatt peak system includes a 5-kilowatt peak home solar battery backup. The cost of the storage unit is 4000 dollars or the average cost of 800 dollars per kilowatt-hour of storage capacity given above. As a result, the cost of the plant rises to a total of $12300 (8300 + 4000).

As was noted before, the plant in our example produces 4,750 kilowatt-hours annually. However, with the aid of the storage tank, self-consumption rises to 3800 kilowatt-hours or 80% of the electricity generated (4,750 * 0.8). You now save 1140 dollars in electricity expenditures (3800 * 0.3) because you don’t have to purchase this much electricity from the public utility.

With the aforementioned feed-in price of 8 cents, you can contribute the remaining 950 kilowatt-hours (4,750 – 3800 kWh) to the grid and make an extra 85.5 dollars per year (950 * 0.09). As a result, a total of 1225.5 dollars in annual electricity bills are saved. We expected the plant and the storage system would be profitable within 10 to 11 years. Once more, we have not factored in yearly maintenance expenses.

What particulars should I consider when selecting and utilizing home solar batteries?

You should purchase a home battery storage using lithium-ion batteries due to their higher efficiency and a longer lifespan than lead batteries. Get quotes from different suppliers and make sure the house solar battery can sustain 6,000 charging cycles. Modern battery storage systems come in a wide range of prices as well.

Additionally, you ought to put the house’s solar battery bank in a cool location. Avoid environments with a temperature above 30 degrees Celsius. The gadgets cannot be installed outside the structure. Additionally, you ought to routinely discharge lithium-ion solar batteries. Their longevity will suffer if they are kept at full charge for an extended period.

The home solar battery bank will live considerably longer if you adhere to these guidelines than the typical 10-year warranty period provided by manufacturers. 15 years or longer is feasible with the correct usage.

How to pick your ideal solar battery?

You should think about what you want from your solar batteries. Decide which of the aforementioned variables will enable you to do that. Find batteries with those qualities and degrees of performance from there. Once you have a list of options that meet your criteria, you can start thinking about price.

Do you want to be able to use solar batteries to power your entire house, say during a power outage?

Not every battery is designed for this use. And some claim that solar battery storage cannot make such a guarantee. Meaning that in the event of a power outage, you would have to turn off some appliances, such as your air conditioner or water heater, and rely solely on your battery storage to keep the lights, freezer, and other essential appliances running.

On the other side, how your home is built will also affect this. Still, how many days have passed? It will be more difficult to maintain this the longer the power loss lasts.

For this reason, the majority of individuals purchase solar batteries, not so they can survive a power loss but rather so they may save as much money as possible.

But ultimately, it’s up to you.

Do you have any expectations for your solar batteries? Start there, determine the sort of battery you want using this page, and then go shopping.