Does Solar Power Work at Night?
Throughout the day, solar panels on your roof absorb light from the sun. This is transformed into power that can be used by your household.
Your solar system will generate electricity whenever the sun is shining and power your home’s appliances. In fact, many households generate surplus electricity during the day. When this happens, you effectively sell your energy back to the grid and you can get paid a feed-in tariff from your energy retailer. This system where you use solar power in the home before exporting excess solar power to the grid is known as net metering.
What Happens to Your Solar Power at Night?
Does solar power work at night? After sundown, your solar system stops producing electricity and your system turns off. This leaves you with two main options:
Buy your electricity from the power grid
Harness the power of battery storage technology
1. Solar Power Without Battery Storage
Many households are buying a larger solar system rather than investing in a battery… at least for now.
Generating excess electricity through the day leaves you with a “credit” that can help offset the cost of using energy at times when the solar system doesn’t cover your home’s energy usage, such as when it’s cloudy or at night.
Some energy retailers in Sydney are now offering great feed-in tariffs for your excess solar power, so we now have many customers choosing to maximise the size of their solar system to take advantage of this. More information on this strategy is available here.
Solar systems automatically send excess solar power to the grid, and during the evening your house will begin drawing power from the grid once energy production from your panels falls past a certain level. There is no day-to-day management required to get the most from your system.
Getting your electricity from the grid at night leaves you at the mercy of the prices set by power companies. It also leaves you exposed in the event of a blackout, where no power is generated from the grid because of network failure.
2. Adding Battery Storage To Your Solar System
Batteries provide households with the ability to take back control of their energy usage.
In the past, the value of battery storage wasn’t as significant because of their cost and the maintenance involved. However, times have changed.
The cost of batteries has fallen by over 70% since 2010, and new lithium ion technology has made them much, much safer to the point where we can now install a battery inside a garage or on an external wall of the house.
Tesla has made enormous waves in Australia, notably after they stepped in and helped South Australia with power supply issues. Since then, Tesla has increased the battery capacity from 100 to 150 megawatts to provide long-term stability to SA.
The company has been at the forefront of the battery revolution across the globe, and now households across Australia have the chance to install a Tesla battery in their home to be able to run on solar power 24 hours a day.
Tesla Powerwall Home Battery Storage
Tesla’s residential home battery is the Tesla Powerwall. Its capacity of 13.5kWh is allowing households to take back control of their energy usage and in many cases receive a credit from their energy retailer every quarter.
Tesla Powerwall is the market-leading battery for storing energy generated from your solar installation.
The battery stores excess electricity generated throughout the day, which can then be used as needed throughout the night. Your system will automatically switch from using energy from the panels to the battery, and back to the grid if the electricity runs out.
The Tesla Powerwall has helped many of our customers reduce their power bills even further and removed their reliance on the energy grid, that is still predominantly powered by coal and gas. A solar system with a Tesla Powerwall will typically be able to run a family home all evening, and it can provide backup protection during a power outage.
We have seen customers reduce power bills of up to $2500 to $0 with the help of the Tesla Powerwall. You still gain “grid credit” by generating excess power during the day; the only difference when using a battery is that you switch to the battery for your energy needs at night, rather than to the grid.
1KOMMA5° offers the most competitive installation prices of the Tesla Powerwall in Australia.
Join the thousands of happy customers who have reduced their power bills with 1KOMMA5°, and request a callback today!