There has been a lot of discussion about battery storage in the media recently. Battery storage is the holy-grail, aiming to solve the ongoing conundrum of how to make best use of PV production which happens during the middle of the day when the maximum demand tends to be early and late.
Companies like SolaX have been producing and selling inverter/battery systems for a while to help deal with these issues and maximise the benefits to end-users. At H2ecO, we have been keeping a keen eye on the options and have recently become one of the first certified Tesla Powerwall battery system installers in the area. We completed our first installation a few weeks ago and early results are excellent. The battery is being pretty much fully utilised every day. It is shifting over 7kWh of electricity for use by the client, as opposed to that electricity being exported with no financial benefit. If that continued for the whole year, the savings would equate to roughly (365 x 7 x £.16)= £409. The Tesla systems currently cost about £4300 inc vat for customers who already have a Solar Edge Inverter. This equates to a return on investment of about 9%. The batteries are guaranteed for 10 years and should last much longer.
The Tesla Powerwall offers far superior performance to a base SolaX system with a 2 kWh battery. SolaX batteries charge quickly in the morning but tend to discharge by around 1am in an average 4 bedroom house. Of course the SolaX battery system can be upgraded by adding extra batteries to get the system capacity up to 6 or 8 kWh. If you have a solaX system that is cycling too fast, H2ecO can help look at options for adding battery capacity to the existing system. This would not be necessary with Tesla; the larger capacity of the Tesla Powerwall means that it can supply electricity long after other systems would be fully drained.
For any existing SolarEdge users, we would be delighted to carry out a site visit to see if a Tesla Powerwall would be suitable for your home or business. They are very flexible as they can be located outside or inside, and as their advanced thermal control system does produce some noise we can help work out the best position in your premises. To book a free consultation, please Get in Touch >
Battery Storage Maintenance
In the last week, we were called to troubleshoot a SolaX system installed by a local company that has gone bust and found that the battery system had not been configured correctly for over a year and had not charged or discharged during that time. A 2 hour site visit sorted the problem and the system is now working very well with the battery cycling once or twice during the day – as it is a smaller 3.6kWh unit.
If you have an existing battery storage system make sure it is working efficiently; give us a call on 01202 918486 to arrange a service.
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