Why Solar Without Batteries Makes Perfect Sense
By Finn Peacock – Chartered Electrical Engineer, Ex-CSIRO & Founder of SolarQuotes
"Should I buy batteries with my solar system?"
This is a question that I'm being asked more and more.
Before I really dive into it, it is important for you to understand that there are two types of battery storage setups that you can choose for your home:
Off-grid systems mean exactly that – your property is not connected to the electricity grid at all. 100% of your electricity is generated by your solar panels (well, unless you need to fall back onto a diesel generator), and is stored in batteries for use at night. Your property is its own electrically self-sufficient 'island'. No meter. No electric bills.
Note that totally off-grid setups are very expensive – you are looking at $30,000 upwards. This is why most off-grid solar owners live in very rural areas where it can cost tens of thousands of dollars just to connect to the distant grid. In these situations it can be economically viable to invest in a great quality off-grid solar system instead.
But for most suburban Australians, off-grid systems make absolutely no economic sense. So from here on in, I'll talk about batteries in the context of 'hybrid' solar systems.
Hybrid systems are setups where your property is connected to the electricity grid. However, hybrid systems will prioritise the use of stored electricity in your batteries over electricity from the grid – because it's a lot cheaper to use electricity you generated yourself instead of paying 31c/kWh to buy it from the grid!
Even hybrid systems are pretty expensive. For example, adding a decent amount of battery storage to your system (about 10kWh worth of good quality lithium ion batteries) will set you back about $10,000.
So why not just wait for batteries to come down in price before investing in solar?
Simply put, every year you go without solar while you wait for batteries to come down in price is another year where you continue to pay high electricity bills, which you simply don't need to do in this day and age.
If you buy a system now, your bills will immediately be reduced. In 3-5 years you can simply add batteries to your existing system for even greater savings.
And you don't even need to buy any special type of system to be ready for batteries.
Every grid connect system ever installed in Australia is compatible with batteries using a special box called a 'battery inverter'.
You can buy one of these when you buy your batteries, and battery installation will be very straightforward.
If you're considering installing solar panels for your home or business, SolarQuotes can help you get quotes from high-quality, pre-vetted installers quickly and easily:
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About Finn Peacock
I’m a Chartered Electrical Engineer, solar and energy efficiency nut, electric car and e-bike owner, dad, and founder of SolarQuotes.com.au. My last “real job” was working for the CSIRO in their renewable energy division. Since 2009 more than 785,000 Australians have used my site to get quotes for high quality PV systems from pre-vetted solar installers.