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May 5, 2022
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Solar panels and batteries - How clever are systems that top up batteries at overnight rates?

  • May 5, 2022
  • 21 replies
  • 13437 views

I am looking at the solar panel/battery combination, and wondered about using Economy 7 overnight to top up the batteries. 

What concerns me is that if the battery is filled 100% at night, there will be no space left to store any free power when the sun comes up. What I was hoping was that today’s systems would work out how much spare capacity to leave in the battery overnight to prevent that from happening.  Obviously that calculation would vary by season.

Has anyone any information about this please? I have yet to find anything online.

Best answer by ArundaleP

Hi, this can be done by seasonal power plans with SolarEdge systems but I am not sure how good the next day forecasting actually works.

 

To be honest with a good solar system the PV generation is very predictable and you can make battery energy plans to suit.

 

I have just ordered (but am still waiting) for their new Energy Bank 10kW DC battery to add to my existing solar system. The software looks very flexible and can prioritise battery charge and discharge to maximise solar self consumption and top up at cheaper rates. When I have it (sometime in June hopefully) I will do a review / case study of my own system with lots of geeky data for people to look at.

 

The biggest problem with solar PV and battery storage is the integration of the two. I would recommend for someone that doesn’t yet have either, to get the system designed from scratch as a complete solar and storage system. I am a huge fan of Solaredge because of their optimisers and dc power control but Solax and GivEnergy do some very good hybrid inverters as well but I can’t comment about their software control.

 

I would recommend getting a quote done by a local installer with a few different options / price points. I am happy to check the details of the quote and designs once you have them. 
 

Tesla Powerwall has some very clever software features to make the best use of solar and time of use tariffs but is a standalone product from the solar system. It does offer grid back up though which most other systems do not.

 

Because everybody’s house and budgets are different I would get some quotes / options narrowed down first. 

21 replies

Newcomer
February 28, 2024

Thanks for this, looks like I need to add batteries.