Solar energy is a growing alternative source of home power. However, with only a photovoltaic (PV) installation, you can only leverage that energy when the PV system is generating electricity. What isn't used is lost. To more fully utilize your solar installation, you should consider solar energy storage. A home energy management system with batteries improves your return on your solar investment.
Can Solar Energy be stored?
All electricity can be stored for later use. There are batteries in mobile phones, electric vehicles, and so many other things in our modern lives. Using battery storage for solar energy allows for storing kilowatts of electricity for future use.
Currently, lead acid, lithium-ion, and flow batteries are standard battery cell technologies for home energy storage.
A typical 200Ah lithium-ion battery will last 5 hours if connected to a 400-watt DC load.
A solar system already has an inverter to convert DC power to AC for home use. The Franklin Home Power system is an AC-coupled system that easily integrates with your solar system to store energy in the aPower battery.
Benefits of Battery for Solar Energy Storage?
Smart power
Home energy management is all about being smart with power governance. You control whether to tap directly from the solar or the grid or to access the excess solar energy you stored in your home battery.
Power independence
Tell your friends that the party you're hosting won't go dark because of the increasingly frequent brownouts and blackouts from the fragile grid system. An integrated home energy management system with solar, grid, and battery storage provides energy security and independence.
Go green
Addressing climate change is an increasingly important challenge. With home energy management combining solar and batteries, you can minimize your carbon footprint.
Mitigate the impact of outages
Whether you're experiencing rolling brownouts or blackouts, the increasingly common outages from an aging grid, or the after-effects of a natural disaster, home energy management can help you mitigate the impact. With a rapid switchover to battery backup, similar to the speed of a UPS, a home energy management system provides battery-stored power in an instant, protecting your home electrical appliances and your perishables.
Grid and solar energy storage can even be combined with generators to recharge the batteries, extending your power through longer outages as well as extending the life of generators through a balance of battery and generator usage.
Solar, generators, and batteries are components of a strong system to mitigate outages.
Minimize utility bills
Energy costs are rising, and on-demand pricing can cause a shock to your systems each month. Solar energy storage is a way to manage and minimize those utility bills.
Modern home energy management systems can load shift. That means excess solar energy can be stored in batteries. Grid energy can also be used to bring the batteries to a full state of charge by taking that energy at low-demand periods, such as late at night. Then, during peak demand, high prices, and times, the household can run on solar and stored energy.
Have more money for vacations and other lifestyle choices by minimizing your utility builds with solar and battery storage.
Is battery storage safe for your home?
"I might be storing thousands of kilowatts in my house?! Is that safe?"
Don't fret. Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries are extremely safe. They do not present the same fire hazard as older lithium technologies did.
In addition, a modern home energy management system, such as the Franklin Home Power system, is connected to monitoring software that alerts the homeowner and maintenance team in real time, providing instant information and prescriptive analysis that makes your home system even safer.
FranklinWH is here to help you understand your home energy journey to find the best energy management solution. Contact us for any questions you may have.