HS-JTH-30KWH

Solar battery storage (commonly referred to as solar+storage) is a booming industry. When pairing solar panels with battery storage, you can store excess electricity produced by your solar panels to expand your options for how you use your solar energy—and how they can profit from it. Solar battery storage allows you to rely less on the electricity grid to potentially lower costs and even supplement your income.

Types of Solar Batteries

 For residential storage, lead-acid batteries have the virtues of low cost, recyclability, and long shelf life with little to no maintenance required, but they are heavy and have longer charge times. Lithium-ion batteries charge more quickly and can hold more energy per mass, making them the preferred choice of most home solar storage systems today, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Considering their cycle life, performance, and cost, lithium-ion batteries have the highest cost-benefit, one which will only grow in coming years as the technology continues to mature and its prices decline.  The remaining 10% of utility-scale energy storage options—like pumped storage hydropower, flow batteries, sodium-sulfur batteries, molten salts, flywheels, and compressed air—are beyond the scale of homeowners.

Several other battery characteristics also determine the cost-effectiveness and usefulness of solar+storage systems.

Battery parameters

Power and Capacity

Two similar-looking metrics—kW and kWh—are measurements of a battery's power and capacity, respectively. A kilowatt is the amount of power that a battery can deliver at any one time, while a kilowatt-hour is the total amount of energy that the battery can store. 

Round-Trip Efficiency

Round-trip efficiency is the measurement of how much energy is lost in the transfer and storage of electrons in and out of the battery. The loss is usually around 5%.

Battery Life

Battery life is measured by the number of cycles of charge and discharge it can go through. Eventually, batteries degrade over time and lose their ability to hold the same level of charge.