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Hi from Greenville, SC. I have had solar panels for 6 years and they have worked great. I would like to install batteries as our system feeds into the grid. Currently, we end the year with credits as we produce more than we use overall but there are a few months in the summer with the AC running we are short. I would like to understand how to install batteries, etc.. I wired my house so I have a basic understanding of electricity but I had someone installed the our solar system. I can furnish the exact system we have with details granted I can get some guidance or direction. Thank you
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Just a wild guess on my part but likely the cost of a new inverter and the cost of the batteries will not be worth the electric cost savings.
I have a grid connected system no batteries. The grid serves as my "battery" having one for one net metering. -
you are probable correct based on some of my "napkin" math but I am wanting to have some power when the electricity goes out. The battery is the only way. I did find an inventor and 2 batteries for around $4K. If there is a another way to have some "backup" power, let me know. Thanks
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I have a gas gen already but with this last outage in SC, gas was hard to find for about 3 days. I was looking at one of the solar generators but they also cost around 2.5K so I thought with a battery system as long as the sun in shinning, I will have some power (granted I can tie it into my system for around 4K. My current system sends the converted energy to a meter which then goes to my indoor panel. The incoming power goes through a separate meter than in to the indoor panel. This is where I see the two coming together.
When the power goes out, the solar system stops sending power to the panel to prevent power going back into the electric lines potentially shocking someone. How does the system shut off the solar power? Just trying to better understand the flow, etc.
Thanks
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It's going to depend on what you want to do. I have an 18kW battery backup on my system. We opted for that as a source of emergency power during a power outage over a propane or gas fired generator. We have a sub-panel with six circuits on it - refrigerator, freezer, Mini-split, a couple of 1st floor outlets.
My inverter has the ability to be in "Self Supply" mode with the batteries, meaning that during peak solar generation month (late April through early August) the batteries can provide enough power to keep the house going overnight, depleting down to around 20% capacity by dawn when the panels would begin to fire up. This was (supposedly) great because we never or rarely pulled from the grid over night during those months, and we had whole-house AC running.
The DOWNSIDE to that is; Yeah! Solar! Panels fire up in the morning, start recharging the batteries WHILE providing power to the house... but nothing went into our Net Credit bank until the batteries were fully charged. Meaning we had 3-4 hours each day where we could have been banking power for, like, oh NOW. I ran my numbers comparing if we just let the inverter in "Clean backup" mode versus "Self Supply", and we would have been ahead several hundred bucks for this time of year. Lessons learned for this next solar season. I won't be so cavalier about living off the batteries.
The batteries are great! Glad we went that route. Since going solar, we have not had anything greater than a blip of a power hit here (just enough to reset all the clocks...). Over the winter months, when I have had a lot of laundry to do and need to use the electric dryer, I will throw the inverter into Self Supply and use the batteries for that power until done (no more than an hour) as opposed to pulling 9-12kW from the grid for the duration.Rade Radosevich-Slay
Tiverton, RIComment
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