Power bills can be frustrating, especially with the rise of outages, both in frequency and length. But you don’t need to let the utilities take your hard-earned money for shoddy service, especially if you already own solar panels. Let’s explore how a tailored power solution from Anker SOLIX X1 gives you energy independence without wasting money on energy you’ll never use.
What’s Your Energy Goal?
The first question you need to ask is what do you want to accomplish with your power. There are three common objectives and each has corresponding battery requirements.
Goal 1: Buy Power When It’s Cheap
Energy rates aren’t constant. They fluctuate over the course of the day, and it can mean you spend a lot of money at night. This is especially true in states like California with its NEM 3.0 policy. It’s imperative to maximize solar energy savings. You don’t need a system that sells power back to the grid. Instead, you can start with a 6-10kWh battery system that stores your solar energy and uses that power when electricity prices are most expensive.
Goal 2: Have Backup Power Ready
Here’s the most common reason why you want to have a power system: backup power. Integrating solar and battery storage together ensures you have uninterrupted energy during grid outages, keeping essential appliances running during emergencies. For most homes, a 10kWh battery can power vital appliances for up to 3 days. This increases your energy independence and reduces costs, since you’re using your own solar power.
Goal 3: Power Your Entire Home
To keep life going as normal during outages, you’ll want a system that can power your entire home. In this case, lithium-ion batteries are required to meet the high load demand. Systems with at least 40.8kWh of usable power and 15kW of continuous power can back up the average-sized home seamlessly.
How to Understand Your Power Needs
No matter how you use your solar-plus-storage system, several factors determine the number of batteries required. Let’s explore how to better understand your power needs.
Energy Consumption Demand
Before rushing to buy a solar-plus-storage system, calculate exactly how much power you need. You’ll want to check the load of any device or appliance that uses electricity, like refrigerators and air conditioners. Depending on how long and how much power you use, this will affect your storage capacity.
Solar Panel Capacity and Production
You’ll also need to know the production capacity of your solar panels since it’s the preferred method to charge batteries. This will ensure you generate enough electricity to charge your battery system to keep your home powered at night. If your energy demands exceed your solar panels’ capacity, you may want to consider adding new solar panels to avoid expensive grid power.
Electricity Rate Structures
If your electricity plan allows you to sell power back to the grid, you could consider buying more battery storage to make a profit. You can store excess electricity during off-peak hours, then sell that energy back to the grid during peak prices for high returns.
How to Calculate Solar Battery Requirements
Step 1: Assess Your Storage Requirements
First, you’ll need to understand how much electricity you’ll need to achieve your power goal.
| Energy Goals | Storage Requirements |
|---|---|
| Maximize Energy Savings | Energy for Peak TOU Periods |
| Backup Essential Appliances | 24 Hours of Energy for Vital Appliances |
| Whole-Home Backup | Daily Energy Use for Most-Demanding Times |
If you want to optimize your savings through load shifting, you’ll have enough storage capacity to match your energy use during peak time-of-use periods. This typically occurs between 4 PM and 9 PM.
Let’s say that during this time, your family uses 9kWh of electricity to run the air conditioner, cook dinner, and stream your favorite show. You’ll want at least 9kWh of storage to make sure you can continue doing all of those activities.
If you want backup power for vital appliances, you’ll need to calculate your power needs by each device. Tally how much electricity is needed to power lights, refrigerators, TVs, Wi-Fi, charge devices, heat water, and run kitchen appliances for 24 hours.
Finally, if you want backup power for your entire home, just calculate your average daily electricity use during the period when backup power is most likely needed. The figure will represent your storage requirements, and you’ll want a system that can meet that demand.
Step 2: Select Your Battery Size
After the calculations are done, it’s time to decide on batteries. Modern lithium-ion batteries have varying capacities from 3kWh to 18kWh. Often times, you can combine batteries to increase storage capacity.
For example, to reach 13kWh of storage capacity, you could purchase between one to five batteries, depending on the brand and model.
Introducing Anker SOLIX X1’s Breakthrough Modular Design
Anker SOLIX X1 gives you the power to give your home backup energy storage without spending money on energy you’ll never use.
Customized Power
Each X1 battery provides 5kWh of capacity and 3kW of output, and the power module delivers 6kW of output. You can connect up to six batteries to make a system and up to six systems in parallel. That’s scalability from 36kWh to 180kWh to meet energy needs as they change.
So if you add a new appliance and now require an extra 5kWh or 10kWh of battery backup, just add one or two batteries to increase your storage. In comparison, Tesla Powerwall 2 provides 13.5kWh of capacity and 10kW of maximum output. With this setup, you would need to purchase another Powerwall, resulting in wasted capacity you won’t use.
Modular Flexibility for Enhanced Performance
Traditional battery setups often rely on every battery in the system. So, problem battery packs affect the whole system. X1 eliminates this with an innovative energy optimizer in each battery. Every battery operates independently, eliminating the barrel effect since sluggish batteries can’t interfere with each other.
Instead, you have up to 2,350kWh* of more usable power over the battery’s lifespan for power delivery with maximized reliability.
Scalable Energy Solutions
With Anker SOLIX X1, you can start with a modest investment, then effortlessly expand your system as your demands grow. The system integrates seamlessly with new battery and power modules, preventing energy loss and optimizing efficiency.
Hear More About the New Energy Standard
X1 changes the game when it comes to solving power outages, and you’ll want to stay up to date on the latest devleopments for this new energy standard. With reliable backup power, enhanced energy efficiency, and solar power compatibility, you’ll take control of your energy and never deal with power disruptions again.
Join the X1 community and discover even more power innovations for your home.
*Data based on a system with 3 battery modules (15kWh).