What to Look for Before Choosing a Home Storage Battery?
Power outages have become a global issue in recent years, making home storage battery systems a reliable and sophisticated solution. These storage systems provide electric energy, making your house shine even when the sun is not. However, having so many options available, do you know what to look for before choosing a home storage battery?
Well, don’t worry. We are here to help you with this problem. Even when you can buy efficient batteries such as Innotinum’s, it’s better to make an informed decision.
Types of Storage Batteries
The difference between storage batteries is mainly because of their chemical composition. The following are the most popular and efficient ones.
- Lead-acid batteries
- Lithium-ion batteries
- Nickle-cadmium batteries
- Flow batteries
These types have further subtypes, but we will leave the discussion for another blog.
What to Look for Before Choosing a Home Storage Battery?
Home storage batteries are expensive, so it’s better to know what to look for before choosing a home storage battery. The most important factors to consider are as follows:
Battery Capacity
Battery capacity is the first thing you should look up while buying a home storage battery. The capacity tells you how much energy the battery can store. The energy measuring unit of a home storage battery is kilowatt-hours (kWh).
First, calculate how much energy your vital devices consume daily to determine how much capacity you need in a battery. To make things easy, do the calculations in kWh rather than any other energy unit. It will help you determine exactly how much kWh of battery capacity you need.
Battery Power Rating
The battery's power indicates how much energy it can deliver at once or how many devices can run on it spontaneously. It is also measured in kilowatt-hours (kWh).
Home storage batteries have two types of battery power rating:
- Continuous power rating
- Peak power rating
Continuous power rating means the amount of energy a battery can provide to an electric appliance that requires continuous energy, such as a refrigerator. In contrast, peak power rating indicates the maximum amount of energy a storage battery can provide in a short time.
You must learn about battery power ratings before buying. Many storage batteries have a 5 kWh continuous power rating and a 7 kWh peak power rating. If you have many electric devices that require energy continuously without break, then you must consider a battery with a higher battery power rating.
Please note that a battery with a high capacity and low power rating runs longer than a battery with a low capacity and high power rating.
Lifespan
If you are going to invest time and effort into finding and installing a home storage battery, it is critical that you buy a battery with a long lifespan. What good is the monetary and time investment when you will have to do it again after a short while? It is not only frustrating and tedious but also costs a lot.
You can estimate the lifespan of a battery with three elements:
- The number of expected Cycles (number of times a battery fully drains and charges again)
- Expected Operating years
- Estimated Throughput (the expected amount of energy a battery delivers over time; depends upon the battery capacity)
You should choose the home storage battery that promises to operate at least 70% of its original storage limit after ten years of purchase.
Battery Type
Choosing the right battery type can save you a lot of hassle. The battery’s chemical composition determines how the whole home storage battery backup system will operate.
Lead-acid batteries were crowned the most efficient batteries for so long. Still, they lost the first spot to lithium-ion batteries because they are more efficient, require almost zero maintenance, have a compact size, and are light in weight, unlike lead-acid batteries.
Lithium-ion batteries come in two types:
Nickle Manganese Cobalt (NMC)
Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP)
The NMC type is more famous because it can save more energy in smaller sizes and has relatively low prices. On the other hand, Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) is long-lasting.
Round-Trip Efficiency
A working system needs energy to work, right? Well, it’s the same case with home storage battery systems. They use some energy to store it in a battery and release it to the connected appliances, which is called round-trip efficiency.
Let’s say a solar panel provides 10 kWh of energy, but the battery only delivers 7 kWh, which means that the battery has 70% round-trip efficiency.
An efficient storage battery has 80% or more round-trip efficiency. A Ni-Cd battery delivers 100% gained energy, but as we discussed earlier, installing it in a house or vehicle is not safe.
Safety Rate
The safety rating of a battery involves appropriate energy storage, round-trip efficiency to minimize energy loss, peak power rating, continuous power rating, battery capacity, and lifespan.
Apart from these factors, the factor with the most concern is the fire risk or chemical leakage. To address the chemical leakage, sealed battery types have been introduced. The advancement in technology has also reduced the fire risk.
For example, the use of lithium iron phosphate chemistry in ESS (energy storage systems) contributes to increased safety. Because the failure in an LFP cell results in low energy release and lower fire risk.
Cost and Warranty
Lastly, price tags and warranty years are important factors to consider. The price tag of a product usually ends up as a deal breaker. It is important to mention that home storage batteries are worth the investment and most probably are made once or twice in a lifetime. So, if you see an expensive battery with all the amazing features on the market, you should go for it.
The average home battery system cost for a 12.5 kWh battery is $19000, which drops to $13160 after the 30% tax credit is secured.
The warranty years of a product give a sense of security. If a product has enough years of warranty, you can make the heavy investment without losing sleep. It is recommended that a battery with at least ten years of warranty be purchased.
Best Home Storage Battery Recommendations
So many companies are making home storage batteries, each claiming to have manufactured the best ones. However, the reviews and feedback of homeowners tell a different story. Following are the batteries with so many good reviews from the users:
- Innotinum
- Tesla PowerWall
- Panasonic EverVolt
- LG Home8
- Generac PWRcell
- Enphase IQ 5P
But we will again advise you to consider all aspects even when buying these batteries. Who knows, you might find a better one. Happy shopping!