The increase in installation rates of solar power nationwide has made energy storage systems more affordable than ever. If you purchased solar to decrease your home’s utility bill and ultimately reduce your carbon-footprint then why not double down on your investment and make it truly worthwhile? This isn’t a matter of go-big or go-home but rather whether you would like to take full advantage of the solar system you invested in.
CAUTION: If you own solar panels on your home and have not yet added an energy storage device on to your system, there’s an overwhelming amount of solar energy that your panels are absorbing which they are not able to directly utilize.
Residential energy storage has become a nationwide phenomenon as installation rates in the United States have been increasing drastically since 2018. This can be seen as a product of several reasons:
- Selling residual energy that your residential property stores back over to the grid during peak demand periods (figure 1) has proven to be largely advantageous for homeowners’ nationwide who sell their stored energy in return for credit on their monthly utility bill.
Solar storage system provides benefits to the owner as well as the rest of the grid users
- Incentives provided for those willing to install solar alongside energy storage systems have seen to reduce the cost of a solar batteries to up to 25%. Outside of privatized incentives such as this, government incentives for solar-plus-storage instillations have shown to lower system cost by roughly 30% if eligible for a federal investment tax credit.
- The per-kilowatt-hour cost of residential energy storage systems have been decreasing drastically during their rise to fame. From 2012 to 2017 studies have shown a 15% per year decrease in cost.
- It’s not unlikely that the energy expense on your utility bill is a product of your time of use (TOU). For those who fall into this category, using the energy that your home stores during peak energy price periods can be incredibly rewarding financially. Some advanced storage systems today, such as those engineered and designed by CleanSpark, come with the ability to gauge market prices and maximize usage efficiency—making energy storage within the home’s microgrid simply more practical for the everyday homeowner.
- In states such as Texas and Florida, major hurricanes and storms have shown to accelerate residential battery adoption. Not unlike its counterparts, wildfire-prone areas of California are a part of this trend as well. When the grid goes down having a backup battery could save your life, states like California know this to be true and have implemented countless local incentives in order to save lives and possibly homes. For example, in California an incentive program known as the Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) offers homeowners anywhere from $1,600 to $2,500 in savings on a residential storage system.
By saving money through selling energy back to the grid and maximizing the efficiency and potential of your solar investment, adding an energy storage system to your home’s solar panels (or any other energy producing device) offers you a heavier wallet and an asset that will work day and night 24/7 for your benefit.
