Hi I've done many videos on my home solar power systems plural because I have more than one um, and I'll link in those videos if you haven't seen them. One of the common questions I get asked is why I haven't added a battery to my system or if I do? Is it financially viable? Is it worth actually doing so? That's what I'm going to look in this video. I'm going to go through the numbers and this is just for my installation. Okay, this is for my own use.

Everyone's circumstances are different, so if you're going to think about the viability of a better home storage Battery Solution and solar solution for your own home that you need to take into account your own circumstances. So it varies a lot. and I've got kind of a weird setup. So I've pulled the numbers from my energy bills for the last last four quarters and that's all we need.

even though I've got three different Monitoring Solutions uh, the ways to actually extract data. You know how much energy I'm producing, how much I'm consuming and exporting at the end of the day. Okay, and when you're doing a financial calculation like this, all that matters is your energy bill. and I'm currently exporting any excess energy which you don't use to the grid and getting to pay to pittance for it.

I'm getting paid about 7.6 cents per kilowatt hour, which is ridiculous, But anyway, that's what it's like here. There was even talk about them actually trying to charge us to actually export energy to the grid. Insane. Anyway, so we don't need all of that data that I've gathered and got available to me I just need the bills, how much I'm exporting to the grid, and how much I'm consuming from the grid.

So what I've got here is for each quarter. Uh, in this particular case, 91 days. we've got the amount of energy which I sold back to the grid. So I'm exporting.

That's what sold means I'm exporting back to the Grid at 7.9 cents per kilowatt hour, getting paid in absolute pittance for it? So is it better to actually store all of the excess energy and then reuse it at night when it's not shining? And then I've got another figure here. which is the amount of energy that I used from the grid. So this is what I'm using at night. basically because during the day else, the home solar arrays that I've got the three kilowatt um, string one plus the five kilowatt in Phase system.

It more than covers our daily use and we even charge our EV with it our 2020 ionic EV more than enough usually during the day to charge that. So I've effectively got a solar powered car. so that excess sold energy that I'm selling back to the grid. That's the excess energy after we've actually consumed whatever it is.

So we've been charging the EV during the day, we, you know Mrs EV blog works at home and a lot during the day. We do a lot of things during the day when the solar's out and with time some of our appliances to come on to use energy during the day and stuff like that to help out. So we're still exporting like a quite significant amounts of energy actually more than what we're using Autumn April to June We've got the same figures here. You can see that we're basically exporting quite a lot, uh, less there and we're using a bit more here.

And then in winter is our actually our Peak energy usage because our homes recently thermally efficient. so in summer we we do cool it down a bit. we use the air. Cons: We've actually got four air conditioning uh systems to do cool it down a bit, but no.

but we don't use nearly as much energy as we use uh to keep warm in uh, winter time. So our Peak energy usage is winter. and just as an aside, all of our hot water is currently gas, but we are thinking about in the future installing a heat pump electric system for that, so our consumption our daily consumption will increase if we install. if we, uh, you know, heat up our water with a heat pump electricity system, you know.

But once again, this will depend on if we've had a particularly bad uh, summer. we actually have, uh, this year we like in terms of like just overcast and rain and everything Very rainy. Overcast start summer. so all these numbers sort of like fluctuate.

But you know, we can only go with the numbers that we've got. and you can see that we exported the most amount of energy actually during Spring 2239 kilowatt hours that we sold back to the Grid at an absolute pittance and we could have used that. And here's the thing during each one of these quarters: look at this: excess energy 1793 could have easily offset the 1021 kilowatt hours that we actually use pulled from the grid and same down here in Spring more than double uh, that we actually just sent back to the grid. Then we pulled back from the grid.

So if we had a battery storage system in summer and spring, it looks like that we'd be a hundred percent, uh, grid independent. In fact, we'd probably even sell back a little bit of Excess power. But you can see here that during Autumn and uh, winter, uh, the amount that we fed back to the grid I.E The excess that we had doesn't quite account for the amount of energy that we pulled back and same here. Similar sort of uh ratio there, so not quite So, Only about half a year could we be actually grid independent attended.

So assuming that a battery system can roughly offset the amount of energy that we're consuming from the grid, then we can calculate so 1021 kilowatt hours divided by 91 days is 11.2 kilowatt hours per day that we're actually buying from the grid. And that costs us. Uh, basically 3.38 per day at I'm paying about 30 cents per kilowatt hour. Currently we our base rate's about 25 cents per kilowatt hour here.

I'm on a fixed rate. by the way. I'm not on a peak and off peak variable rate. Don't have one of those smart, newfangled Smart Meters So we're on a fixed rate.

Um, so it's about 25 cents base rate. Plus we pay an additional five cents for a hundred percent new infrastructure green energy. and we've been paying that for like 18 20 years. Something like that.

And you can go through the same calculation here for Autumn Winter and Spring 435 Where a peak in in winter Here we'd be paying about six dollars a day. So we can work that you know, an average of 4.30 per day Average? Uh is. You know we're paying about fifteen hundred and sixty nine dollars per year. So if we installed a battery system that roughly offseted all of our usage here, and yes, for some Seasons, we can't, uh, offset it here quite like fully.

But other Seasons we can. and Export And let's just say it all comes out of the wash that we can basically install a battery that can offset all of the all of our energy requirements. So what budget do we have? Well, uh, 1569, uh, dollars per year that we're currently paying if we invested that, buying a battery up front. Now that could offset all of that.

So we effectively would our bill would effectively drop to zero. You know, on average over the year? then. uh, given at least a 10-year operational battery life, then you know we've got basically fifteen thousand over fifteen thousand dollars to spend on a battery solution. So you can get a pretty decent Battery Solution for 15K Aussie that is.

But of course I would really like to pay this back off over 10 years. I Wanted to pay it off in like half that if if possible, like five years. So then I can get like Potentially if it lasts, it should last at least 10 years. In fact, a lot of the batteries have like a 10-year plus uh, warranty on them.

It will talk about it depends on you how you actually use them as well, how you cycle them, the load that you put on, and go into that in a minute. But 15K Budget: Feel comfortable spending about half that? say seven and a half thousand dollars on a Battery Solution So what size battery do we need? Well, it actually popped out of our numbers up here. 11 Uh, you know. Eight kilowatt hours, 14 kilowatt hours? 20 kilowatt hours 11 kilowatt hours down here per day is what we're pulling back from the grid, so you know, hopefully if we can extract that amount of power during the day once again, just all this is all on average.

If you have a bad day, you're going to be dry born from the grid. You're not going to store enough energy to use at night for the whole day. Etc and depends on what you're doing. Some days we use three times the energy that we'll use the day before.

It looks like we at least need a 10 kilowatt hour battery for this thing. Maybe a 15 kilowatt hour? You know it might be Overkill to put in like a 20 kilowatt hour battery like for your worst, uh case season. Here you could, but you're paying a lot more upfront cost. uh for that thing.

So anyway, I'm just going to standardize here on a on a 10 kilowatt hour pack. um, just for pricing purposes. So this is by no means a comprehensive list of battery. Uh, Solutions I've just got I just picked four of them here.

Um, just for you know, to run some numbers basically. Uh, we've got the Tesla Of course I wouldn't use uh, wouldn't choose Tesla myself. but I'm going to add it here because it's the big name in the industry. Everyone knows it.

If I didn't put it in, everyone would comment down below. Is it still Lithium? Um, have they moved to lithium ion phosphate? I Don't know I Want a lithium ion phosphate solution? Not a standard lithium-ion solution? Anyway, it costs about it's a it's a thousand dollars at least to install system here which I believe is currently 13 kilowatt hours. so it works out to about 10 000 Aussie bucks per 10 kilowatt hours. now in Phase because I've got a five kilowatt in Phase system here I Could Obviously one of my options is to install an in-phase battery.

They've got the new IQ system that's coming out shortly now I Called them up today and I could not extract a price from them so they just didn't know they wouldn't even ballpark it. Um, so you know, but it's a premium solution so I'd say it's probably on par with the Tesla here. so I've put question marks, but it's going to be a reasonably expensive solution and it uses the Iq8 micro inverters in there. and it's You know, they're a dual directional thing and anyway, it would be a you know, fairly expensive solution.

and both of those these are what's referred to as an AC battery. and basically that does it. Powers your whole house. It does whole house, uh, backup.

Essentially, so you know, and that requires additional installation and requirements, legal requirements, and everything for wiring it in. It also requires it might be additional boxes and transfer switches and stuff like that, but it will basically give you an entire house backup. If the power fails, then it's actually wired. Basically, your entire house is wired on the output side of the battery.

uh, inverter system. so it just continues to power your entire house. Now let's look at of course. I've talked about because I've got two different systems here and once again, all this talk is like specifically to my particular installation.

which is a bit. Oddball because I've got two different systems I've got three different Monitoring Solutions We've got uh, curveballs being thrown in that we're going to extend our house and part in the end phase. Well, actually, both systems are currently coming down. I'm thinking about adding a new four panel smaller system to go onto the string I Got many different way weird and wonderful requirements, but the other ones would be a hybrid string inverter system.

So I replace my existing three kilowatt Sunny Boy inverter with a five or six say kilowatt hybrid inverter. which then you can hook a battery onto the hybrid inverter and then during the day it will store any Excess power that you don't use to the battery and then at night it'll just feed that back in to the grid. I Wouldn't have to I just simply change the current box I've got at the moment I wouldn't have to change the wiring on my fuse box or anything, wouldn't have to install anything in an additional so. but I'd have to buy a new hybrid string inverter to do this.

Now, the thing about these is that the basic installation of a hybrid string inverter, they only provide essentially emergency power if the power fails. So they give you like an additional Uh Mains outlet that is still active if the grid goes down and then it can store energy in the battery during the day and you can continue to operate independently. But it doesn't power your whole house. It's not integrated with the wiring of your existing house, so you've only got like an emergency power output.

You can power your fridges and freezers and you know, a laptop or two, or you know, and some emergency light. So it's a bit of a more manual uh system. And for those who ask, the power here in Sydney is incredibly reliable. I've lived here all my life.

My memory is that the biggest blackout we've had is probably five or six hours. That's it. like over my entire lifetime of living in Sydney here. Not to say it can't happen, but you know it's not something that I plan for.

So I would be happy personally with a hybrid string inverter with just an emergency power output. If the brown stuff does hit the fan, we can at least keep the fridges and freezers and lights running. So what could I uh do with that? Well, uh, Byd I Like the look of their LVS Uh series batteries, they're like stackable in four killer watt hour increments. So 4, 8, 16 and you just physically stack them as high as you want.

Well, there is a limit I think 22 kilowatt hours or something like that can currently priced at about I think about 7.5 K Aussie for 10 kilowatt hours even though you can't buy exactly 10. But now pretty much the bottom of the range. Pricing I could find here in Australia is uh, green bank and they vary anywhere from 4K to 6K per 10 kilowatt hours. So you know like under half of what a Tesla or an in Phase uh, you know solution would cost or one of the bigger ones and there's LG cam as well.

Did they go under with LG I'm not sure the LG solar went bust By the way, if you didn't know breaking news from like a year ago. uh yeah, they actually so all my LG solar panels that I've got on my roof they're out of warranty now. Yeah, but she'll be right. they'll just keep working for another 10 15 years.

easy actually. Uh, Green Bank even have a 15 kilowatt hour battery for only 5K Aussie Um, so yeah. I got to check details on that. You know there's various different warranties and they've got different.

In fact, the 10 kilowatt hour batteries that they have, they have five different types so it's just like it's nuts I haven't wrapped my head around at all yet. Plus I need that hybrid string inverter? That might be another couple of you know 2K there. at 1500 to 2K it's only need like a five, uh, five kilowatt hour jobby or something like that. That'd do the trick.

So bottom of the range pricing I Could actually get away with half of that price I Talked about half of that fifteen thousand dollar budget for about seven and a half. K I Could actually install a 10 to 15 kilowatt hour battery and that would like do actually three seasons. That would okay, like if I had say a 15 kilowatt hour battery. that would actually cater for three of my Seasons Only during winter here, would we, um, you know, be pulling? maybe a little bit of excess energy and there's tons of system installation and compatibility details.

you can go in with battery Solutions and Hybrid String inverters. Suffice it to say, like these Byd batteries, they'll only work with certain brands of uh string inverters. You know, you might get a Frontier, She might get a sun grow, you might get a sunny Boy than other brands of hybrid inverters like Di for example. One of my viewers actually put me on to those and apparently I I could in theory, apparently they've got like a generator input and you could actually feed the five kilowatt in-phase micro inverters into the hybrid string inverter.

So that sounds really cool. And of course, with my weird ass system, here's a problem which I'm you know pretty much stuck with if I use this hybrid string inverter system here I Can't extract all of the solar excess solar energy during the day because I've got a five kilowatt in-phase micro inverter system which is totally separate to what these hybrid string inverters would only work with my three kilowatt string here plus maybe an additional 1.7 or 1.8 kilowatts that I plan on installing in a more favorable location the three kilowatt string inverter I got at the moment if you see my other other videos, the location that's very poor on the east south east, so side of my roof. So it's actually it's about as bad as it gets, but it still does give me usable. You know, decent amount of usable energy.

it's already paid for itself I've done a payback video on that so it's effectively uh, free. But yeah, if I use a hybrid string inverter one that doesn't have a generator input, then I can't feed my in-face system into that so my In Phase system will not. If there's any Excess power from the end phase, it'll either I use it during the day or I lose it. That is where an AC battery would be better because it doesn't matter.

I Could have five different independent solar systems. It doesn't matter. They're all essentially at the end of the day. they're all feeding onto the Grid at the same point.

So an AC battery simply just takes all the uh, you know energy that you're generating from your solar and using that excess and then can store it in the battery. But the hybrid string inverter right off the bat would only work with the existing string system that I've got. so I'd replace my three kilowatt Sunny Boy and that Sunny Boy system still going stronger. probably sell that.

Get a bit of coin back after that as well, which helps pay for a hybrid string inverter here. But now to throw another curveball into this. you can't just buy a battery and be done with it. Um, if you if you want to do it properly you have to talk about are you absolutely Penny pitching Do you want to service this battery? If so, you want one that have serviceable you know, batteries over the lifespan of this thing in 10 15 years.

Do you want to replace the individual cells? you know, are you handy? Do you want to do that? And this is why you know, but most suppliers will actually give you like Tesla don't They've just got like in one size uh fits all kind of thing. and so the end phase I think but ones like Byd and these green Aussie Green Bank ones and other uh Brands They'll actually provide you with different types. the same physical type. they might be lithium-ion phosphate, but they might use different uh size cells in different uh you know, arrangements and things like that to provide different Power output capabilities and that's something you have to factor in like do you want 100 Cycle these batteries series every day? If so, that's going to lower the lifespan.

What's your Peak power gen? You know at night time that you're going might be, uh, taking from these things, then you know you've got to factor all that sort of stuff in. Um, to your battery. Uh, Choice over here and there's a whole bunch of technical detail you could go into there and you can do that until the cows come home. It's quite complex, but just know that there are different battery Solutions uh, like in terms of peak power and serviceability and other factors that need to be taken into account.

So to answer the question, is it financially viable for me to add a home storage? Battery Solution Yeah, it looks like it is. I think I'm going to go ahead with this and even if it did, only pay for itself over 10 years, for example, at least you've got that during the day and you get the warm fuzzy knowing that oh, I'm charging my I can charge my EV at night. Now using some power that is Excess power that I stored during the day gives you that warm fuzzy and it also gives you that emergency power backup as well just in case the grid goes down. I Can probably afford to spend, you know, at least seven or eight K's on a home battery storage solution and it looks like it's going to pay for itself.

Leave your thoughts and comments down below. Everyone will have their own opinion on this and once again, my system is quite complex. Yeah, I could go several different ways and there's pros and cons of both ways. so you know I shouldn't even even talked about that in this video.

but no, no, yeah and check out my Odyssey Channel I've put some exclusive videos over there as well. Not solar related, but there are some exclusive videos in that over there. Check those out! Got almost 70 000 subscribers on Odyssey and thanks to all my patrons who, uh, support and pay for whatever it is I do here. Catch you next time.