Home Energy Storage
There are limited amount of different storage mediums available for the home and getting financial payback can be very challenging in some situations. Obviously batteries are the most common storage device but heat stores (or heat batteries) are available now but your hot water cylinder is a good means of storage as there is a constant demand within a home and is relatively easy to send the excess generated electricity from PV to heat water. There has been experiments using hydrogen storage in Nordic countries but widespread deployment of this is unlikely.
There are a couple of different implementations of battery storage and the solution depends on what is already installed and if there is a FIT associated with the property as original installation cannot be modified without impacting the FIT.
A hybrid inverter can have batteries connected directly to it which means that one energy conversion from AC to DC is not required resulting in slightly higher overall efficiency. When power is required for the house the battery DC is converted to AC for use in the house.
An AC coupled battery storage system connects onto the current in house electrical system and can be set to supply battery power to home when high electricity tariff’s cost or charge with excess solar PV during day and discharge taking over supply of house power until they reach their lower discharge limit.
If considering a battery storage system the location of the battery is critical to ensure safe operation and consideration should be given to weight of batteries and also temperature of battery location as not all batteries have thermal control and battery performance reduces when above or below optimal operational temperatures.
If you have any questions on the above please get in touch