Residential Battery Energy Storage
When the power goes out in your area, solar electricity generation will stop. This can be surprising, especially if the sun is shining and it seems solar panels should be still producing electricity. Yet, your home will not have power. Why? Solar panels generating power could cause electricity to flow into the grid, which would be dangerous to utility workers. To prevent this, the inverter automatically shuts down when it senses loss of grid voltage as a safety measure.
What Can I Do to Keep Power On?
Typical grid-tied systems are not equipped with batteries, yet adding them provides benefits. Tick Tock Energy installs solar panel systems with and without batteries.
1) Emergency Off-Grid
Should the power go off in your area, a battery can still provide electricity to your home or business. When the solar electricity generation is stopped for safety reasons, the battery storage system will kick in, providing power for your needs.
2) Energy Storage and Load Management
Batteries will store energy from the day for use at night to optimize your self-consumption of solar generated electricity. Often, excess electricity is generated at midday, and that can be used when the sun has set, if the solar installation includes batteries.
3) Hybrid Load Storage with Emergency Backup
Some homeowners and businesses request a hybrid solution. They want electricity available if the grid is not reliable, but also want night-time use. In this case, you can choose to deplete your batteries into the evening but stopping discharge early to retain a small reserve for an emergency power outage. Alternatively, you can install larger batteries, so you are covered for both scenarios. Our systems can integrate with a backup generator as well.
Let Tick Tock Energy Know Your Goals
Do I Need to Decide About Battery Storage Now?
It’s best to plan on battery backup from the beginning, even if you don’t want to install the batteries until a later date. Knowing in advance helps us engineer your system for today and the future, selecting the appropriate inverter equipment and electrical infrastructure design to easily add batteries later. This will lower your long-term equipment and installation costs. Letting us know your short- and long-term priorities now will help us develop a cost-effective, engineered solution for your unique needs.
My Solar Panel System is Operational. Is it too Late to Add Batteries?
While it is possible to retrofit an existing system to include battery storage, it may require inverter modifications and some reconfiguration to incorporate the battery into the overall solar circuit. Let us know your goals, and we would be happy to engineer a retrofit to accommodate.
What About Emergency Back-Up Generators?
Tick Tock Energy can also integrate mechanical emergency backup generators that power your whole home or business into your solar installation. We can interconnect both natural gas and propane backup generators with your battery-based solar system.
If you are considering adding an emergency back-up generator in the future, let us know! The more we understand your short and long-term priorities, the better we can engineer, build, and install a cost-effective system that will accomplish your goals.
Incentives for Energy Storage
Utility companies may incentivize projects that include battery storage. Illinois residents served by either of the major investor-owned utilities in the state, Ameren and Comed, are able to obtain a Distributed Generation (DG) rebate for battery energy storage systems. This incentive helps boost installation of energy storage for overall support the power grid. The goal is to store solar energy produced during the day to augment the grid into the evening hours, when the sun is setting. To learn more about this incentive, click here.
Tick Tock Energy will engineer and build a system to meet your individual priorities, short and long-term. Adding greater energy capacity involves adding additional stacks to your battery to capture more energy and offer more storage. However, commercial and residential battery storage require different considerations. Tick Tock Energy will work with you to deliver the right energy storage system for your specific needs.
Types of Battery-Based Solar Systems
AC-coupled
Solar panels create DC electricity, but your home or business’s appliances and machinery require AC electricity to run. In an AC-coupled system, the DC power from the solar panels goes to a solar inverter, where it is transformed into AC electricity for use in your building. Any excess power that will be stored in the battery system must be converted back to DC for storage. It will then be converted back to AC when it is flowing from the battery to your building.
AC-coupled systems are commonly utilized when retrofitting battery storage into an existing solar panel array. An AC-coupled system is generally less costly and time-consuming to install when retrofitting a previously engineered solar panel system, making it often the preferred solution if batteries weren’t part of the pre-engineering plan. The downside is there is some efficiency loss during each electrical inversion, and an AC-coupled system requires 3 inversions for use.
DC-coupled
In this arrangement, solar panels create DC electricity, which can go directly into the battery system without inversion to AC. In a DC-Coupled system, the electricity produced by the panels is inverted only once, as it flows from the batteries to your home or business.
DC-coupled solar energy systems are more efficient, but can be more complicated…particularly if the system wasn’t designed with battery storage in mind. For that reason, upfront costs may be higher, especially if a retrofit is being considered.
Ready to Start?
Start Your Solar Power Plan today
Tick Tock Energy is ready to help you invest in a clean solar energy system on your property, capture lucrative solar incentives, reduce long-term electricity costs, and and enhance the value of your property. To discuss your power needs with one of our solar consultants, request an initial consultation and quote today.
Tick Tock has helped countless homeowners across Illinois and adjacent states to enhance the value of their property and reduce their utility costs with solar power systems. Explore our recent installations below.
