It's true for me, 6.6kw solar system, 10kwh battery, I pretty much never run out of of power now, my grid usage is background noise
this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2025
151 points (100.0% liked)
Green Energy
3000 readers
72 users here now
Everything about energy production and storage.
Related communities:
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Impressive. Can you share your setup costs and general location (I..E region / country)?
I’d be curious as well. I’m looking at batteries but my consumption is 80% in winter when whatever the capacity I install I’ll end up using the network :-/
do you have time of use charges?
if it’s more expensive to use power at night people are filling up during the day and using it at night, bit of electricity arbitrage
It’s the reverse currently, off peak after 10pm and the weekends. Definitely possible to edge that way during wintertime but the cost differential isn’t so big so the roi is definitely not great.
Australia but it's not really applicable to other places, we now have strong gov incentives to get solar (STC's) and batterys (battery rebate):
https://onestepoffthegrid.com.au/home-batteries-and-rebates-what-you-need-to-know/
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-07/government-home-battery-discount-explained/105257914
I also live here: https://www.qhatlas.com.au/sites/default/files/Qld%20sunshine%20state.jpg
So plenty of sun compared to countries way up north
I would say, of all the forms of power, solar comes the closest to actually sleeping
Latitude and clouds really matter in these calculations. Further up north, the light gets weaker, so you’ll need to compensate with more panels. Also, the sunny hours fluctuate wildly between the short days in winter and short nights in summer.
The article mentioned Birmingham, and in that case, solar is just one of the many power sources they’ll need. Solar can support the mix, and in the summer it could even dominate for a while. They’ll still need a lot more from other sources.
The closer to the equator you are, the more sense it makes to use solar power. In places like Germany, it’s already fine, in Greece it’s really good. Anywhere south of that, it’s clearly the best solution.