Home Battery storage is a great investment. Your motivations for acquiring battery storage will vary depending on your circumstance, but here are five key reasons to get battery storage:

Increase your Solar PV self-consumption.

One of the draw backs of Solar PV is that without storage, you can either use the electricity generated there and then, or lose it (and export it back to the grid). It really is a case of “use it or lose it”. When you add battery storage either as AC-Coupled or as a hybrid system, the excess generation is directed into the battery for use later.  By excess generation, we mean all the electricity generated which is over and above the instantaneous demand for electricity from your property. So if the solar array is generating 2kW of power, and your home is using 1kW, then the “spare” 1kW is sent into the battery. This means that you get to use more of the electricity that your solar array is generating – hence the term “self-consumption”.

Import low-cost overnight electricity for use during peak hours.

Time of use tariffs have been around since the 1960s with the creation of the “economy 7” system. But today, time of use tariffs have proliferated. Whilst the detail will vary from one tariff to another, the basic feature is that electricity varies in price depending on when you buy it. Whilst you can manually “load-shift” to a certain extent, this can be inconvenient. An example of load-shifting is when you put the dishwasher on overnight rather than when it is full. In fact, load-shifting is one of those phrases where the real meaning is obscured. What it really means is if you change your behaviour, from what is optimised and most convenient for you, to adhere to someone else’s schedule, you can save money. But if you want to simply use electricity at the time which is most suitable for you (ie. turn on the dishwasher once it is full), then you cannot do this. Unless you have battery storage. With battery storage, you can charge up the battery at the cheap / off-peak rate, and discharge it during the course of the day. If optimised, it is possible to only ever buy electricity at the cheap / off-peak rate.

Sell electricity to the grid for premium prices.

The opportunity now exists for regular consumers to be a supplier of electricity to the National Grid during periods of high demand and low generation. Up until now, domestic consumers have been able to sell electricity to the grid, but only when they are generating excess electricity. The opportunity that now exists is for your battery to discharge at specified times, storing electricity when supply is widely available or less expensive, and discharging when supply is constrained or more expensive. Consumers with a battery have actually become asset owners. Asset owners can leverage their assets and get paid handsomely for doing so. On 1 December 2023, asset owners were paid £4.20 per kWh exported. This was part of a trial run by National Grid ESO, but the expectation is that this scenario will be repeated in the future on a regular basis, both at national and regional levels. Where consumers can buy electricity for £0.09 / kWh and sell for £4.20 / kWh, there is a considerable arbitrage opportunity available, which ]enhances the Return on Investment of the Battery.

Uninterruptable power supply.

Perhaps you live in a rural area, in which the power supply can be somewhat unreliable, especially during winter. Battery storage can offer you uninterruptable power supply. In a rural scenario where your primary heating supply is bottled gas, solid fuel or oil, in all likelihood you still require electricity to run the control systems or pumps. So, whilst you might in theory be able to heat your home in a power cut, in practice, you cannot. Having UPS integrated with your battery system means that you can continue to enjoy heating and lighting even during a power cut. Add in a Solar Array, and you can be potentially “off-grid”. Ordinary Solar Arrays (without a suitable battery attached) will shut off during a power cut as a safety measure. A battery system with a UPS feature will operate in “island mode”, and so can still receive power from a solar array. A GivEnergy All in One is specifically designed for this scenario.

Highly tax efficient.

Brimstone Energy are not tax consultants. But consider this. If you buy a battery storage system, it is currently 0% VAT which gives a considerable saving on tax to purchase and install the system. This investment will deliver cost savings to you in the form of reduced energy bills for the lifespan of the equipment – GivEnergy systems come with a 12-year warranty as standard. At risk of stating the obvious, this means that you don’t need to spend your money buying so much energy. The money you need to use to buy this energy is post-tax income. Energy is taxed at 5% VAT. So if your energy bill is £3000 per year, that comes in at £3150 including the 5% VAT. To pay the £3150 bill, you need to have a gross sum £3937 assuming you are paying 20% income tax. Just something to think about. [We have produced several more detailed articles look at this aspect].

These are our top five key reasons to get Battery Storage.

There are many others, and we’d be delighted to have that conversation with you, so get in touch whenever you are ready to take the next steps.

Brimstone Energy UK – For all your home energy needs.