Investing in a brighter future: ROI for home batteries

Home batteries give you the ability to control when you use your solar energy, and this is an attractive proposition to many. Those who have invested in solar and have experienced a drop-off in their feed-in tariff are all too aware of the need to recoup a loss of income when these tariffs fall.

Perhaps you’re one of many solar households that are now working from home and are seeing the difference that utilising your solar is making to your power bills but have wondered if a home battery might be right for you.

In any case, no one wants their hard-earned solar generation to be exported to the grid before they can consume it, only to have to re-purchase expensive grid-power in the evenings. This is what makes the case for batteries so compelling.

So how can you figure out if it’s financially worthwhile getting a home battery?

Do your homework

Knowing your energy usage habits is key to understanding how storage can work for your household. Ordinarily (not in the COVID era), are you at home during sunlight hours, or at work? On weekends are you out and about more, or at home running appliances? Are your peak times for energy use in the morning and evening? Do you own an electric vehicle, have multiple fridges or run a pool pump? How efficient are your appliances and how many of them run off electricity opposed to gas?

Batteries deliver the most value back to households which:

• Consume a significant portion of their electricity in the evening when most people are running kitchen appliances, heating, televisions, electric hot water, the kettle, dishwasher and perhaps computers.
• Have enough excess solar generation to power their needs during the evening
• Pay high rates for their electricity when the sun isn’t shining

If you’re with an energy retailer that provides hourly consumption data, this can be especially useful in determining your daily consumption patterns. If not, you could ask your retailer if you have a smart meter for data and get assistance to interpret it. This information will provide you with invaluable insights before you decide if a home battery is right for you.

If you are unsure if you are paying the best available rates for your energy, visit Energy Made Easy and complete the questionnaire to compare your rates with other energy retailers.

Calculating return on investment on a home battery

Return on investment (ROI) is simply the answer to the question, is a home battery going to save you more money than it costs you?

Savings from adding solar + sonnenBatterie

The combination of a PV system and a sonnenBatterie will allow you to cover about 80% of your yearly energy requirement with self-produced and clean energy. This may vary depending on your energy consumption patterns, the size of the solar system and battery, and the rates you pay for power, but it’s a good average to use as a guide. To figure out your total potential lifetime savings from adding solar + batteries, take your most recent annual energy spend (not including your daily supply charge), multiply this by 10 years (the length of sonnen’s warranty), and multiply the result by 0.80.

Want to learn more?

We’ve made it easier for homeowners to understand what are the financial benefits and savings they can expect from choosing sonnen.

To help you on your journey, we have developed a user-friendly, holistic online calculator. It works by asking you to enter information from your energy bill as well as asking about your household energy usage. It then draws on some of Australia’s leading industry benchmarks for solar production and consumption to automate complex calculations, taking care of the legwork for you.

Get in touch with us and we can get you in touch with one of our local and trusted solar partners that can help you to with a more personalised quote and estimate tailored for your home.