More and more people are discovering home batteries and the possibility of being able to store electricity from their solar panels to make better use of them. But what is the advantage of a home battery and how is a regular battery different from an intelligent one? We investigate what the benefits are and what the different features entail.
Investing in solar panels for your property is a smart decision for those who want to increase their self-sufficiency and take a step towards more sustainable energy consumption. If you want to get the most out of your solar panels, you should also consider investing in a battery connected to the panels, as it allows you to store solar energy.
When the sun shines, it could result in your solar panels producing more electricity than you need at the time. With a home battery for the solar cells, the surplus electricity is stored in the battery and that electricity can then be used when on a cloudy occasion or in the evening. This feature is often referred to as time shifting. If you have a home battery without intelligent control, that’s how it works – the battery is charged when the sun is shining and then discharged as soon as you consume electricity at home. It is a smart way to expand the use of solar power, but to make the really big savings on the electricity bill, it is required that the battery comes with an intelligent control – a so-called EMS.
Advanced electricity price optimization
On the market today there are several different smart home batteries that allow you to store solar energy, but it can be difficult to know what differentiates them and what the benefits really are when the battery has an EMS. Most smart batteries have functionality to control consumption according to electricity prices and use electricity from the battery when the price is high. This is a great advantage, as it means that the cost of electricity will be lower when you can use your self-generated electricity at these times.
What makes QuiPower stand out when it comes to electricity price optimization – as this function is often called – is simply the amount of data that is analyzed. Other home batteries on the market take prices into account, but this could ultimately mean that your saved solar energy is drained from the battery at the first peak in electricity prices or at a time when you’re not at home and using as much energy, because the system acts right now instead of thinking ahead.
QuiPower not only considers the current electricity price, but also considers how the price will develop in the future and can, for example, predict an even higher electricity price peak or predict that you will need to use a lot of electricity later in the day when you start the dishwasher, shower, and charge the electric car at the same time. This type of advanced analysis is unique to QuiPower and ultimately means that you get even lower electricity costs, as the intelligence in QuiPower makes careful decisions for when the electricity should be saved and when it should be sold.
Peak power shaving
Another benefit of intelligent energy storage is that the system can cut your power peaks. You get a power peak when you use a lot of electricity at the same time, and when this happens, you want as little as possible of that electricity to come from the grid, because you pay a fee based on the highest power measured during a month. This fee is not a reality for everyone yet, but by 2027 all Swedish electricity customers will be forced to pay these power tariffs. A battery that does not have an intelligent EMS cannot predict or notice these power peaks in real time, but a smart battery can, and thus you can get reduced grid fees because you do not have as high peaks in your consumption. QuiPower is constantly learning how to use energy at home and automatically adjusts the limit of what counts as a power peak. In other smart batteries on the market, this limit is often fixed, and you need to go in and change it manually if you notice that it is too high or too low in relation to how you use electricity.
Phase balancing
Something important to keep in mind, regardless of whether you have energy storage or not, is that the three phases in your property do not become overloaded and use approximately the same amount of energy for each phase. An intelligent battery, such as QuiPower, ensures that the phases are balanced and pushes energy out to the phase where it is needed. This allows you to optimize the use of energy from your solar panels and the electricity stored in the battery, thus reducing the risk of having to buy and sell electricity at the same time – something that could otherwise be the case when you have a lot of production from the solar panels but low demand on any of the phases.
Various features for great energy comfort
Another popular feature that you will find in smart batteries such as QuiPower, but not in batteries without smart control, is the ability for the system to control large electricity consumers towards times when electricity costs less. This is completely automatic in QuiPower, with the help of a lot of data and analysis. For example, your heat pump can be a major consumer of electricity.
In addition to this, there are additional features – such as off-grid, smart electric car charging and tariff control – which means that you get lower electricity costs and higher electrical comfort. In QuiPower, this is completely automated. So when your neighbours follow the electricity price hour by hour and start their dishwasher, shower, vacuum or charge the car when they see that the price is low – anyone with QuiPower can calmly sit back and use electricity whenever they feel like it, safe in the knowledge that QuiPower is so intelligent that all the best decisions will be made automatically.
Cut your electricity costs with QuiPower!
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