How to Choose the Right Battery Storage System for Your Home?

Choosing a battery storage solution can be tricky, especially for first-time users. It also requires careful consideration of several factors such as your daily energy consumption, tariff, solar panel system size, and more. While you can always seek help from professional designers and electricians for this, having basic knowledge of selecting the appropriate system for you can be helpful in ensuring you get the best setup for your daily energy needs.

First things first—your battery type. You have tons of options when it comes to battery packs including lead-acid, AGM batteries, and lithium batteries. Among these, battery experts would most likely recommend lithium batteries, especially the lithium iron phosphate ones of LiFePO4 batteries. You must have heard of this as it's quite popular in the battery field for its advantages over conventional power packs.

Why LiFePO4?

LiFePO4 batteries are superior to other batteries in overall quality and performance. For one, they have a higher energy density that allows them to pack increased capacity in a lighter form.

These batteries are most known for having a built-in battery management system (BMS), which not only optimises every cell inside the power pack but also provides additional protection against common battery issues. LiFePO4-based batteries are also long-lasting and perform better than other battery types under cold or warm temperatures.

What Other Factors Do You Need to Consider in Choosing a Battery Storage Solution?

Energy Needs

The first step to selecting a battery system is to determine your everyday energy needs. This will affect other factors such as your battery size, overall cost, and installation adjustments.

Cost vs. Quality

Battery storage systems can be expensive. After you have figured out your daily electricity consumption, find a battery solution that fits your budget and at the same time is able to supply your power needs long-term. You don’t want to pay for something that will only be useful for the next couple of years.

Installation

The installation parameters of a battery storage solution cover available space and method of setup. An entire battery system consists of a couple more components aside from the power pack such as the inverter, solar panels, and wires. Assessing the best type of installation for the area you'll be putting everything in is crucial.

Electrical Metrics

How much capacity does your battery have? What is the maximum charge/discharge current it can sustain? These numbers indicate how well your battery will perform from its power output down to how long its runtime will be.

Warranty

The best battery warranties usually range between 5 to 10 years. See to it that you check the warranty terms too, as well as the warranty offers for the other components included in your battery system.

Safety

Lithium-based batteries are also your best picks when it comes to safety. LiFePO4 power packs in particular are designed to be incombustible and have a non-toxic composition that guarantees utmost user and environmental safety.

How Do You Determine Your Battery Size?

The size of your battery is one of the most important considerations in choosing your on-grid/off-grid system. To size your battery appropriately, you must first determine what you intend to use it for—is it for backup power, a main power source, or do you want to save money on your electricity bill?

Once this is clear, have a good estimate of how much energy you need per day. This includes the energy you consume between battery charges and the amount of power that each of your appliances draws. You also need to take into account the surplus energy that your solar panels generate each day as this can affect your solar feed-in tariffs.

Ready to have your own battery storage solution installed? Find out the right system for your energy needs today and enjoy the benefits of renewable solar energy to the fullest.