6 reasons to install battery storage now
There are now several battery storage options to choose from. On average, price points are still high, but there are plenty of good reasons to have batteries installed in your home. In this piece, we’ve outlined six different arguments for installing them as soon as possible.
Reduce your electricity bills
The bad news first: home battery units are still on the pricey side. If you are looking to get your money back in a couple of years, it’s probably best to wait!
However, you can still start saving on your bills today. If your usage profile is one where you are out during the day and consume most of the energy in the evening, then you can achieve the maximum payback. A typical UK household, using 9 units of electricity a day, can expect to consume at least 3 units directly from the solar panels (in the morning and during the day), 3 units in the evening from the battery, with the remainder coming from the grid.
Small batteries currently offer the best returns
You could go for a big battery (e.g. 6kWh) with a view of pulling all of your peak usage from the unit, but it is likely that in the UK climate on a typical 10-panel solar system you would be unable to charge it outside of the summer season. We would recommend a smaller unit (e.g. 3kWh), which is much more likely to get a full charge/discharge on a daily basis.
Generally speaking, small-scale units like this typically offer the shortest payback periods – especially when you can cycle (charge/discharge) them twice a day, if you have a time-of-use tariff like Economy 7.
In our experience, we have found that consumers are much more aware of their own usage after we install the system, thanks to the monitoring app that comes with it. And, although it’s difficult to measure, anecdotally we find that there is another layer of savings to be made purely through behaviour change.
The Moixa Smart Battery is only 50cm high and 35 wide, enabling to fit almost anywhere in the home!
Increase your energy independence
Don’t like relying on electricity from the grid? Batteries reduce the amount that you need to draw from the grid to meet your electricity needs. Solar panels on their own can help you do this, but they’re not as flexible – you need to use the energy they produce while it’s being generated, or it automatically goes back to the grid.
Batteries help you to keep more of the energy you generate in your home for you to use yourself. The electrons you pull from the battery are the same as those from the grid, but its nice to know you are using your home-grown power!
Reduce your carbon footprint
Click here to see a live dashboard of the national grid.
As you can see, there is a lot of coal and oil-powered generation, which is not good for the planet. You can also see 8gWh of nuclear, which, although carbon-free, is expensive, controversial and difficult to dispose of.
By generating your own solar energy and storing it in your battery you could potentially reduce your home’s carbon footprint.
Trade your energy on the grid
Home battery storage is opening up a whole new world of possibilities, as electricity retailers and network companies explore ways to harness batteries to reduce wholesale market price spikes and curtail peak demand. Around 70% of your bill is made up of the cost of wholesale energy and the charges to move it along the network to your home. The network operators have to rely on diesel power generators at peak time – which is expensive and dirty!
Moixa’s innovative GridShare platform enables you to sell back some of the stored energy back to the grid at peak times and get paid for it! How good is that? GridShare solution uses spare battery capacity to support a low-carbon, cost-effective and smart electricity system through AI learning. This technology enabled us to trade spare electricity with National Grid, meaning you can earn £50 a year without lifting a finger! But earnings don’t stop here. You can also receive up to 50% of all profits generated from trading the excess electricity saved in your battery once you opt-in for the profit share option.
Help build the grid of the future
While home battery storage is still in its infancy, it’s widely anticipated that it will only be a matter of time before batteries are as commonplace as solar panels. Over the next few years, there will be hundreds of thousands of batteries in UK homes – creating a smart grid, which puts you in control and makes you less reliant on the Big 6 Energy companies. In this grid of the future, individual households will be active players that not only buy energy from the grid, but also contribute energy to it. By installing a home battery system, you can help to shape the future.