Extending solar panels with a home battery

In Flanders, the meter no longer runs backwards for those with a digital meter. It is therefore more advantageous to use solar power yourself while your panels are producing it.

Using your own energy becomes more important as a result. A home battery lets you use your own generated energy later, instead of feeding it into the grid. Smart control runs your controllable appliances, where possible, while your panels are producing. How much it saves you depends on your consumption, your installation and energy prices, and a home battery does not pay off for everyone.

A battery mainly pays off when there is a clear difference between when you generate and when you consume. If you are out for much of the day and your consumption peaks in the evening, there is plenty of surplus to store and use in the evening instead of exporting it.

If you already use most of your solar power directly, for example because you work from home during the day or run a heat pump, there is less surplus to buffer and the calculation changes. We make no general promise about savings, because that varies by home and consumption. What we do is look at your pattern and tell you honestly what a battery adds in your case.

With existing solar panels there are two common routes. With an AC-coupled battery, a separate inverter is added at the battery and your current solar inverter stays in place. With a DC-coupled solution, you replace the existing inverter with a hybrid inverter that controls the panels and battery together.

Which route is most convenient depends on the brand and age of your current inverter, the space in your installation and your future plans. Both work, but they differ in cost and in how efficiently the power goes from panel to battery. This is exactly the kind of choice you want to clarify properly in advance.

The inverter is the heart of an installation with storage. It determines how solar power, battery and grid are aligned with each other. A wrongly chosen or undersized inverter throttles the rest of the system, no matter how good your battery is.

That is why, when extending a system, we always look first at your existing inverter before proposing a battery. You can read more about the role and choice of an inverter in our inverter guide. That way you can be sure that the battery you buy really matches what is on your roof.