Benefits of Solar Battery Storage
The price of energy continues to rise, while the price of lithium batteries continues to fall, making backup storage an affordable option for many households in Australia.
The feed-in tariff for selling excess solar power back to the grid is very low in many states of Australia. In NSW, we typically get a credit on our power bill from around 5 cents a kWh. By storing this excess solar power in batteries, we can use it during the peak billing period where prices can be over 50 cents a kWh. This is known as maximising self-consumption of solar power, and it is a great way to reduce your power bill. Many Solaray customers with solar storage are now running their home almost entirely on solar power!
Energy prices continue to rise. Even if you get a discount from your energy retailer, power prices in NSW are amounts the highest in the developed, and nationally prices are up more than 120% over the last 10 years. This trend is expected to continue for the foreseeable future, so by installing solar with battery storage you can lock in your power prices for the next 25 years by generating most of your own power using solar (Rolfe 2016).
Australian households are leading the world with our uptake of residential solar power with 1.5 million systems installed, however the same cannot be said for government and big business. Most of the power generated in NSW still comes from coal and gas, and there is reluctance in Canberra to transition to renewables as fast as most Australians would like. The greatest power we have as consumers is to lead the way by installing solar power with backup storage to run our homes almost entirely on solar power. By installing a 5kW system, we take around $50,000 off the books of the coal industry and directly invest in the growing renewables industry.
Why Australians are Installing Solar Storage
– Solar storage systems include revolutionary energy management technology that automatically directs solar power into your home or to recharge your batteries. Online consumption monitoring allows you to monitor how much power you are using in the home as well as how much solar power your system is generating.
– Exciting home automation is on the way, which will allow you to send excess solar power into appliances such as to automatically turn on the pool pumps, air conditioner or underfloor heating. All of this will be able to be controlled from a mobile phone, allowing you to take back control of your power consumption.
– EV charging is around the corner. Installing a solar power system will allow you to charge your electric car from excess solar power, and it may even allow you to charge your home batteries from excess capacity in the car’s battery.
– The power grid is struggling to generate enough capacity on hot days, causing highly-publicised and disruptive blackouts in NSW and SA. By installing solar storage, you can continue to run essential appliances such as your freezer, the internet and perhaps a few lights.
Leave a Reply