If you’ve had solar panels on your Hills District roof for a while, you’ve probably noticed the same thing most of our customers do: you generate plenty of power in the middle of the day, but you’re still paying peak rates once the sun goes down and the family’s home for dinner. That’s the gap a home battery is built to close.
How a home battery actually works
A battery sits between your solar panels and your switchboard. During the day, any solar power you’re not using in real time charges the battery instead of being exported to the grid for a few cents a kilowatt-hour. Once the sun goes down, your home draws from the battery first, and only pulls from the grid once it’s empty. For most Hills District households that means covering the entire evening peak, from when you get home to when everyone’s in bed, without paying peak-rate electricity.
Why it makes sense for Hills District homes
Sydney’s Hills District gets excellent solar exposure most of the year, which means well-sized systems are often generating more than a household can use before mid-afternoon. Without a battery, that surplus is exported for a low feed-in tariff. With one, it’s stored and used to run the aircon, the oven and the TV that evening instead of importing it back at a much higher rate. A battery also keeps key circuits running through a grid outage, which matters more the further out from the CBD you are.
What size battery do you actually need?
It comes down to your evening usage, not the size of your roof. A typical family home drawing 15 to 20kWh a day, with most of that used between 5pm and 10pm, is usually well matched to a 10 to 13.5kWh battery. A smaller household with lighter evening usage can often get by with less and save on upfront cost. We size every system from your actual bill and usage pattern rather than a one-size-fits-all package, so you’re not paying for storage capacity you’ll never use.
Adding a battery to an existing solar system
If you already have solar installed, the good news is you almost certainly don’t need to replace it. Most modern batteries retrofit onto an existing system with an additional inverter or a hybrid upgrade, and we handle the compliance and network approval side of it. If you’re planning solar and a battery together from scratch, sizing them as one system usually works out more cost-effective than adding the battery later.
If you’d like an obligation-free assessment of what battery storage would look like for your home, give us a call on 1300 720 958. We’re a local Hills District team and we’re happy to walk you through the numbers for your specific usage.
