What is a battery backup?

A home battery acts like a barrier between your home and the power grid. It plugs right into your current electrical system to optimize daily energy use and to provide backup power during a grid failure. It does this by taking in power from the grid or your solar panels and then strategically deploying it on your house.

When you install a backup battery as part of your home solar energy system, you can actually store the extra energy your solar panels produce at home instead of feeding it back into the electricity grid. With solar batteries, you maximize your ability to use the electricity generated by your solar panels on a day-to-day basis. During the times when you need more electricity than your solar panels are producing (later in the day or at nighttime), you can use the solar energy you have stored.

How much power is it packing?

Home batteries vary in size significantly, from 6 kWh up to 20+ kWh. As an illustration, without an additional charging, a typical 10 kWh home battery could:

• Charge your iPhone 952 times

• Blend 4,000 margaritas

• Microwave 300 Hot Pockets

• Run 30 loads of laundry (without drying)

• Keep your fridge on for 50 hours

• Brew 30 pots of coffee

• Run a space heater for more than 6.5 hours

• Keep an LCD TV on for 50 hours

• Make 360 pieces of toast in a toaster (or 1,000 in a toaster oven)

Benefits of a battery back up systems

• Your home can run off of the solar energy you have stored in the event that the grid goes down. 

• Multi battery systems can power a home for days.

• Backup batteries can help you save more when you go solar.

Facts about battery back up systems

Solar batteries can provide backup power without producing greenhouse gas emissions, like alternatives such as gas generators.

Solar panels are required by law to shut off during a power outage. If they didn't, they would pose an electrocution hazard to utility workers trying to fix the problem. A home battery makes it so your solar panels can continue running in an outage, providing continuous power to your home and your family.