Without battery storage, solar systems typically to use the utility grid as a battery. Solar energy is first used to directly power your home and the excess energy is pushed onto the local grid to power neighboring systems. When the solar system is underproducing, the home draws electricity from the local grid.
Especially during winter, there will be days when your panels generate little to no energy. To make up for the lack of solar, you can fill your battery with cheaper energy from the grid. Now that we’ve nailed down the basics, let’s get into the nitty gritty of charging your battery from the grid. 1. Static time-of-use tariffs These are nothing new.
You essentially use the local utility grid as a battery to “store energy” without needing a solar battery bank in your home. If you have your own battery storage, you likely won’t transfer much energy to or from the grid. You store your own energy and pull from that, and the grid serves as a backup to the backup.
This kind of setup is called a grid-tied system. You essentially use the local utility grid as a battery to “store energy” without needing a solar battery bank in your home. If you have your own battery storage, you likely won’t transfer much energy to or from the grid.
A grid under less strain means grid operators are less likely to resort to burning dirty fossil fuels to meet electricity demand. Even if you have solar panels… … charging from the grid still makes sense. Especially during winter, there will be days when your panels generate little to no energy.
However, there are benefits to having battery storage for your solar panels. In addition to backup power, battery storage is becoming more beneficial as net metering policies change and more utilities adopt time of use rates. It’s also a means of achieving energy independence and ditching fossil fuels altogether.
Grid-tied solar systems work without any battery backup equipment. That''s why home solar people generally say "the grid is your battery." When your solar system produces excess energy, you''re sending it out to your neighbors and getting credit for it (under net metering), but …