Solar Nerd articles about: Batteries

Due to prices that continue to fall, new incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act, and power outages that are becoming routine in places like California and Texas, storage batteries are increasingly popular with homeowners. Homeowners can use batteries to keep the lights on during a blackout, store their excess solar electricity for later use, or to save money by lowering their reliance on the grid during utility peak hours. Consumers now have several battery manufacturers to choose from.

The Generac brand is best known for their fossil fuel-powered generators, which range from small portable generators and home backup units, all the way up to huge industrial-sized generators. Generac has also jumped into the home battery market. This makes sense: batteries paired with solar panels fulfill a need that had previously only been met by natural gas or propane-powered generators. Even though the initial cost is higher, many consumers are choosing the clean energy alterative.

As solar panels have become mainstream in the United States and especially California, energy storage has become more and more important. California is trying to deploy as much energy storage as possible, with gigawatts worth of batteries coming online. Homeowners can get in on the act too. Even if you have solar panels, your home won’t have electricity during a blackout unless you have a battery. The Self-Generation Incentive Program is operated by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).

If you’re looking for a solar storage battery for your home, Enphase offers several options with its IQ series. Enphase is best known for its microinverters. Most solar homeowners these days are choosing power optimizers or microinverters over conventional central inverters, and Enphase dominates the North American microinverter market with its IQ7 and new IQ8 series. Meanwhile, lithium batteries are getting cheaper all the time, utility companies are having scheduled blackouts (aka power safety shutoffs) due to wildfire risks, and utilities continue to attack net metering.

If you like to get off the grid, whether it’s roughing it in a tent, or you’re more of a “glamper” who likes to stay comfortable in a boat or RV, you probably still like to have electricity to keep your devices powered. We’ve written articles about some of the solar technology you can use to make this happen, such as flexible solar panels, charge controllers, and solar phone chargers. However, if you have big power requirements that involve keeping a larger battery charged, things get a little more complicated.

Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) has been doing planned blackouts through the wildfire season in 2019 as an emergency measure to avoid deadly wirefires like the Camp Fire of 2018 that killed 85 people and burned over 150,000 acres. Today’s planned blackout will be largest yet: over 800,000 customers will be affected. The Camp Fire of 2018 was caused by a faulty PG&E power transmission line in Butte County. A fallen PG&E power line sparked a fire on the morning of November 8, and within two days more than 6,700 structures had already been burned.

Whether you’re a homeowner who is just learning about home solar panels, or a green energy enthusiast who is wondering how the electric grid can use solar energy when it’s dark, a question you might have is whether solar panels can store electricity for later use. Solar panels by themselves don’t have any capacity to store electricity. Electricity generated by a solar panel flows out of the panel immediately as direct current (DC).

One common misconception about home solar panels is that they’ll keep your house powered even if the electric grid goes down. They can, but only if you have the right equipment to go with it. First of all, let’s understand one thing that might seem obvious: solar panels don’t work in the dark. For the majority of homes that have solar panels, this means having a grid connection that supplies power when your panels don’t generate any electricity.

Solar panels work by collecting sunlight and magically turning it into electricity to power your home. So does that mean when the sun goes down your electricity turns off and you can’t watch Game of Thrones? Actually, no. Read more to learn about how electricity continues to work seemlessly in a solar home, even when it’s dark, cloudy, or your panels are covered in snow. First, an explanation. Sunlight is made up of elementary particles called photons.