Creating Energy Independence With Solar Panels & Storage Battery Systems In The Home
When designing a house, one of the most important issues is energy efficiency. That means there needs to be the right amount of insulation in the foundation, walls and roof, energy efficient windows, and well placed on the periphery of the house. The house also should be placed on the property for optimal solar orientation. With these factors covered, the house will require minimal energy for heating and cooling.
A perfect solution for efficiently providing the energy for electricity is to install photovoltaic (PV) solar panels on the roof or next to the house. The house can get energy from the grid when there is no sun or inclement weather and feed energy back to the grid where this is allowed.
Some houses are totally off the grid because connecting to the grid would be too expensive or unavailable in that area. These houses require photo voltaic (PV) panels to provide energy and batteries to store the energy for periods when there is no solar energy and/or inclement weather. When a household stores solar energy produced on site and uses that energy when solar production is less than than the energy requirements in the house – it is called “self consumption.”
The house may also be connected to the grid and return excess energy to the grid when the battery is full or during peak periods of the day when the grid is overloaded.
I interviewed Lior Handelsman, VP of Marketing & Product Strategy and Founder of SolarEdge, a global leader in smart energy technology to get very up-to-date information on solar energy. The interview with Handelsman follows:
1. How have the batteries improved in the last several years?
The past decade has seen impressive improvements in battery technology, in areas such as performance, lifespan, charging and discharging rates, efficiencies, energy densities, and more. This all means that batteries provide consumers with more value. There are a number of drivers influencing technology improvements, such as the large demand from the mobile market this past decade and the expected demand from the electric vehicles (EV) and solar market in the coming one….
