How many solar batteries do you need to power your home?
Depending on what you want to use your energy storage system for and the characteristics of your household appliances, the number of batteries you'll need can vary widely. There are several questions to answer: how long you'll want to stay battery powered, what kind of production your solar panels get, what appliances you absolutely need to keep on, and the list goes on and on.
While we can't say for certain how many batteries you'll need, we've outlined the steps you can take to start doing that math in our article about how much of your house you can power on batteries. You can also check out our article on going off-grid with solar and batteries, where we do some example math on what it would take to keep your home completely solar and battery powered.
Round trip efficiency is a system-level metric that measures how well your energy storage system (battery + inverter) converts and stores electricity. There are losses associated with any electrical process, meaning you’ll lose some kWh of electricity when you invert it from direct current (DC) electricity to alternating current (AC) electricity, or when you put electricity into a battery and take it out again. A solar battery’s round trip efficiency tells you how many units of electricity you’ll get out of a battery for every unit of electricity you put into it.
Battery lifetimes are measured with three different metrics: expected years of operation, expected throughput and expected cycles. A battery’s expected throughput and cycles are like a car’s mileage warranty. Throughput lets you compare how much electricity you’ll be able to move through your battery over its lifetime. Cycles measure how many times you can charge and discharge a battery.
To convert a battery’s expected or warranted throughput into an expected lifespan, divide the throughput (expressed in kWh) by the usable capacity of the battery to estimate how many full cycles you’ll get from your battery, and divide that number of full cycles by the number of days in the year: a 20,000 kWh throughput warranty on a 10 kWh battery means 2,000 expected cycles, or a cycle per day for 5.5 years.
To convert a battery’s expected or warranted number of cycles into an expected lifespan, divide the number of cycles by the number of days per year: a 4,000 cycle warranty equates to a cycle per day for 11 years.
All solar batteries have to meet certain safety requirements in order to be certified for installation in homes and businesses: every battery that you receive a quote for on Sankopower is safe and meets these safety requirements! There are, however, some battery chemistries that have been tested for safety to different levels, going even beyond the government-mandated safety requirements for batteries, meaning some battery chemistries are slightly safer than others. But the most important thing to remember is that all batteries installed in the US are very safe!
It's hard to say. The best battery for you will depend on a number of factors, from the size of your home to the characteristics of your solar installation, and all the way to what you even want to get from an energy storage system. If you have a large home with lots of appliances, you'll want to look for a high-capacity battery that can keep pumping out electricity for hours on end. If you're price-conscious and care more about optimizing your solar energy system, a smaller battery with great battery integration may be the best choice.
Sanko power system can provide the better service and premium battery for you.
