Do You Need Solar Battery Storage?
When considering the environmentally conscientious investment of generating electricity with solar power, you also must consider solar power batteries. If you are going to be generating your own power, you will need batteries for when the sun is not shining and you need a back up source to power your home.
A battery can be used for back-up power or for off-grid applications. When no grid is available it is possible to use a solar and wind inverter which will charge a battery directly. To prevent overcharging which would damage the batteries, the solar generator needs to be disconnected when the battery is full.
If you are using a smaller scale solar power system – they don’t come with batteries. This means that you get electricity only during the daylight hours, which means no power after dark. For practically purposes though, you need to have a back up battery if you want electricity at night since our modern lifestyles do not allow us to stop using power once the sun goes down. Another option, is to connect to the grid after sundown and use the power from the electric company.
You will need a lot of power stored in those batteries unless you are still operating attached to the grid. Luckily, homeowners who use the grid as back up can take advantage of the Feed-in Tariff or a FiT, also called a Feed-in Law or a FiL. This is a solar premium which is also called Renewable Tariff or renewable energy payments. It was created as an incentive plan, which would encourage the implementation of renewable energy by way of government legislation.
These laws mean that the electricity companies are required to purchase renewable electricity generated from solar PVs, biomass, wind, hydro and geothermal power at higher than the market price set by each government body. This price is meant to offset the costs of implementing renewable energy sources. The rates also differ depending on the type of source used to generate power
So the homeowners or industries who have installed solar panels and are still attached to the grid; can sell the excess electricity produced back to the electric company which will then feed back into the grid system – the homeowner is paid with cash or credits from the utility companies.
This option is not available everywhere so, if you are considering solar power for your home, you will want to make sure you have a good battery storage system. Even if you are connected to the grid, there are plenty of reasons for having back up resources for uninterrupted solar energy no matter where you live or work so having battery storage just makes good sense.