Unlike popular belief, solar panels can’t power up your house during an outage. That’s why solar batteries are crucial.
The batteries allow you to store all the electricity your solar panels generate more than what you use. This way, you can use the stored electricity during an outage or when you experience bad weather, and your solar panels can’t produce additional power.
Solar panels with battery storage are called hybrid solar systems. Solar batteries come with many advantages, and the biggest ones are having backup power storage and being independent of your utility company.
How do these batteries work, and how much are they?
Solar batteries are storage units for the electricity you may not need now but might use later. Having backup power gives you a sort of immunity against outages and long, rainy days.
Your solar panels harvest sunlight and turn them into electricity during the daytime, which is when you use most of your appliances. Much better if you also employ power-saving habits when using appliances.
Therefore, your house might not be able to consume the energy your solar panels have generated, sending the excess power to the utility grid.
But if you have solar batteries, the excess energy goes into them instead. So, even at night, you can stay independent from your utility company by using the energy stored in your solar batteries.
How much do solar batteries cost?
The cost varies according to the batteries’ chemistry. But having them installed can cost around $200 to $15,000. Lithium-ion batteries for residential solar panels usually cost $7,000 to $14,000.
There’s a cheaper option that only costs $200 called small capacity lead-acid batteries. But they can’t power an entire home. They’re only good for storing backup power for an RV.
Solar panels and batteries have actually gone cheaper over the years. Imagine how pricey they were ten years ago. Also, solar batteries are eligible for the government’s 26% tax credit, so you get to save some money.
If you want an estimate of how much installing a hybrid solar system can cost and see if it’s worth it, you can use the solar calculator on this website.
