Page 3 - Understanding energy storage batteries

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Why do people look at battery storage?

With battery storage set to grow in the next few years there are many people that are interested in looking at
this technology but there are also a wide variety of reasons that people are doing so.

Up until now most people that have used batteries to store their energy have been those that have been in
situations where it was not possible, either for economical or proximity reasons to connect to the electricity
grid. However, there are now many more reasons that people are considering battery storage and many more
questions people are asking about the batteries they are looking at.

Over the last 5 – 10 years there has been a big push to install rooftop solar panels to capture electricity to use
on the building the panels are installed on. This was encouraged by governments as they introduced feed-in
tariffs to encourage people to install solar. This was so successful, as the general public took up these offers that
governments soon decreased the feed-in tariffs and now they are extremely low or non-existent, depending on
your state.

Stick it up the power companies

One of the most common reasons we hear for wanting to purchase batteries is to “stick it up the power
companies”. Many people feel that being paid 5-7 cents per kWh for any electricity they generate that’s put
back into the electricity grid, then paying 25-40 cents, and sometimes even more, for any power they use to be
an uneven equation and want to become energy independent to avoid this inequity. Added to this, electricity
prices are rising at an increasing rate and people are thinking of battery storage to avoid ever increasing prices.

Load shifting

Solar panels convert the sun's rays into electricity during the day with maximum generation being between the
hours of 11 to 3pm, unfortunately, for most people unless you are home during the day 80% of this power gets
fed back into the grid for very little return. Then when you need to use the power you are buying it from the grid
at a much higher cost.

Until now, one of the biggest problems with the efforts to use renewable energy to produce large amounts of
the energy consumed on a daily basis has been its inability to reliably supply power at the times it is most
needed. This can and will be addressed with the installation of battery systems that allow households and
businesses to store renewable energy for use in peak periods and minimise expensive evening electricity rates.

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