many of you will already have a solar installation but you might not have a battery yet a battery is a straightforward addition to any solar system and it brings with its significant benefits and if you already have a battery I want to show you in this video that increasing its size could bring even more benefits some you might not have considered before home batteries are most definitely the future and let me show you five reasons why [Music] hi I'm Gary and welcome back to my channel Gary does solar what you're looking at here is a typical solar Generation profile on a sunny Summer's Day from Midnight of one day through to midnight the next let's layer onto that chart a typical daily usage profile you can see that in the morning around breakfast time there's a peak in consumption this could be because of high wattage appliances like a toaster Kettle and hair dryer usage then drops over lunchtime when perhaps there's no one in the house and then Peaks again in the evening perhaps due to the use of appliances like an oven hob and possibly also an air fryer and a dishwasher let's now assume this is a solar installation with no battery you can see that in the morning a large part of that consumption is covered by solar generation which is great but in the evening there is no longer any solar generation to cover that usage and so that energy must be pulled from the Grid in the middle of the day there's a large amount of solar generation but hardly any usage so unless there's a healthy export rate in place that energy is essentially lost unless we do some manual load shifting or find other ways to use that energy for example we could run the dishwasher at lunchtime instead of after the evening dinner we could also run clothes washing and drying machines in the middle of the day this kind of load shifting isn't a perfect solution though if you've started these appliances running and the clouds come over you'll be drawing from the grid during those times something to watch out for one novel use of solar generation that I really like is air conditioning to me this is an almost perfect complement to a solar installation using the sun's energy that is heating homes to cool them down again okay that's all good but how can adding a home battery to this installation improve things well in this video I want to present to you five progressively compelling reasons starting with load shifting load shifting is very straightforward actually Whenever there is more solar generation than the home needs like in the middle of the day it is used to charge the battery then later in the evening when there is no solar generation the battery discharges to meet the needs of the home avoiding any draw from the grid and if the battery is large enough and there's sufficient charge stored it can hopefully continue doing this through the night and into the next day when the sun comes up so you can already see a great benefit of adding a battery to your solar installation but how big should that battery be well that depends on quite a few factors not least your budget some other factors include the size of your solar array the maximum power output of your string inverter and of course your daily energy usage profile there is yet another important factor however which is the maximum charge and discharge rates of the battery consider this scenario where it's 6 PM you're operating the following appliances an oven consuming three kilowatts of power a hob consuming one kilowatt and a dishwasher consuming two and a half kilowatts together with a base load of other appliances let's say half a kilowatt that's seven kilowatts in total and if all those appliances were on on for say one hour that would require seven kilowatt hours of energy now your battery might be full with say 10 kilowatt hours of energy stored which is more than enough to cover that load but if the discharge rate of the battery is only two and a half kilowatts the grid will have to step in and provide the remaining four and a half kilowatts to meet the needs of all those appliances quite sobering really so with all these variables how can you possibly determine what battery size you might need thankfully I have something for you that can help it's a utility I developed recently that allows you to model various kinds of solar and Battery setup and also your usage profile to see what would work best for you here is that utility which you can access via a link in the description I've initially configured the settings for a non-solar and Battery household that uses 15 kilowatt hours of electricity a day at a flat rate of 30 Pence per kilowatt hour here is their usage profile which mirrors what we saw earlier and you can see that this electricity T cost then four pounds fifty a day now let's install some solar onto the house we'll make the array size three kilowatts Peak you can see the generation that such an array would make on a sunny Summer's Day enough to more than half our electricity bill and you can see why the solar generation means we don't have to import any electricity during the middle of the day even better than that we're actually generating far more than the house needs so the excess is simply exported back to the grid let's say our energy tariff pays 15 Pence for every kilowatt hour exported this will generate revenue of 1.72 that day meaning the bill for the day has reduced to only 37 pence let's now add a small battery to the system say one with a three kilowatt hour capacity this reduces our export Revenue slightly but it also reduces the amount imported during the evening resulting in a slight profit for the day of two pence we can see the impact of the battery here the level of export is reduced between 9am and noon because that solar is now being used to charge the battery to 100 capacity then from 4 pm until 7 PM the battery is discharging in order to cover home usage meaning we don't have to draw from the grid until around 7 PM when the battery is fully discharged so you can see already that a battery provides an easy way for you to save money on your electricity without you having to adjust your behavior on when you use heavy appliances in the home but this is only the first of five reasons to get a battery or increase the size of the battery you already have let's take it up a level now time of use tariffs up to now we've just considered a basic tariff where the rate is the same no matter which hour of the day electricity is used but with the rule out of smart meters across many countries over the last few years it has been possible for energy providers to offer smart tariffs which include different pricing levels depending on the time of day electricity is consumed for example cheaper rates during off-peak periods octopus energy one of the largest energy providers in the the UK and now expanding into many other countries offers quite a few smart tariffs in fact these include octopus go and intelligent octopus for Ev users agile octopus which tracks the hourly wholesale cost of electricity cozy octopus for those with heat pumps and octopus flux especially for those with solar and Battery installations I'm a customer of octopus energy and I'm on this particular tariff which is just amazing the Expo rates are so high that instead of me paying for my electricity I'm typically being paid 100 pounds every month on average over the summer something that would be unheard of a year ago I really like how octopus energy is changing things for the better for consumers and I have no hesitation recommending them to my UK viewers if you would like to switch to octopus feel free to use my referral code which means you'll get credited 50 pounds onto your bill I'll also get 50 pound which helps support the work on my channel thank you so how does having a battery benefit you with these time of use tariffs well in many parts of the world especially the UK not every day is a sunny day and so given the lack of solar generation on those days you'll be pulling all of your energy from the grid with the battery though you can charge it up using cheaper off-peak electricity then use that charge to power your home for the remainder of the day or at least until the battery runs out let's see that in action with the utility we used earlier let's first turn off the sun to simulate say a rainy day you can see that because we're no longer generating or exporting we're having to pull from the grid for all our usage which will cost 4 pounds 50 for the day let's now modify the Tariff to one of octopus Energy Smart tariffs let's say octopus go this tariff offers a cheaper rate in the early morning for four hours only 9.5 Pence per kilowatt hour at that time instead of the normal 30 Pence the export rate is only 4.1 Pence however we can now instruct the battery to force charge during that same four hour period in the morning you can see that the battery charges to 100 in just one hour then from that point slowly discharges to meet home demand until about 10 AM when there is no charge left looking at the energy import export chart you can see we're importing quite a lot of electricity between midnight and 1am but remember this is at the cheaper rate then we're not importing from the grid again until nearly 10 am once the battery has run out then looking at the cost for the day our three kilowatt hour battery has reduced the cost from four pounds 50 down to three pounds 78 let's double that battery size to six kilowatt hours and see what the effect is unsurprisingly it now takes two hours to charge to a hundred percent given a maximum charge rate of three kilowatts but remember those two hours are at the cheaper rate the battery then discharges over the next few hours to cover home usage but this lasts a lot longer given the higher capacity of the battery the charge doesn't run out until 2PM at which point we're pulling from the grid again looking at the cost for the day it has reduced further from 3 pounds 78 to 3 pounds 23. finally let's double the battery size again to a 12 kilowatt hour capacity you can see that we're now Force charging all four hours of the off-peak period Then discharging to meet home usage all the way up to 7 PM in the evening and if we look at the cost now it is reduced down to 2 pounds 19 less than half the daily cost without a battery and all this is worst case if there was no sun at all let's add in Just a Touch of Sun say around 15 percent and you see that other than the grid draw for the charging we hardly need to draw from the Grid at all and the cost as a result reduces to just one pound 26 that's down from four pounds fifty a three pound a day saving but it's not just about cheaper import rates some time of use tariffs offer lucrative Peak export rates as well take octopus Energy's flux tariff for example which has both an Import and Export rate profile like this the standard rate is 29.61 Pence for import and 18.61 Pence for export but between 2 am and 5 am the input rate lowers to 17.76 Pence and the export rate to 6.76 Pence and notably between 4 pm and 7 PM the import rate increases to 41.45 Pence but so does the export rate to 30.45 Pence the good news is that we can exploit these tariff rates using our battery and I'll show you how in the modeling utility first we reconfigure the utility with flux tariff rates like so we then set the battery to force charge during the three hour off-peak period which takes it to about 70 capacity and we can expect solar generation to fill the remainder we then set up a forced discharge between 4 pm and 7 pm to capitalize on the high export rate then if we look at the cost for the day you can see that we're now making a profit the import cost for the off-peak charging in the morning cost one pound 82 but during the day we made just over three pound exporting electricity back to the grid this gives a profit for the day of one pound forty seven if you take into account the residual energy left in the battery at the end of the day for more information on how the utility calculates profit see the explanation at the bottom of the utility page octopus flux is a very powerful time of use tariff in the UK and I hope that we'll see this kind of tariff being offered in many other countries across the world before long if you want to get more information on it please look at my video here it not only explains the Tariff in detail but gives the background and the reasoning behind it well worth the watch okay hopefully you can see that time of use tariffs and batteries are a perfect match providing the opportunity not only to increase your savings but also to increase the amount of profit you could make let's kick it up to another level then Plunge pricing this chart from Ember research shows Global electricity generation since the year 2000 split by energy source you can see the ever increasing share of wind and solar over that time today they represent 12 percent of the global Energy Mix and with Peak fossil fuel expected to be reached this year wind and solar is expected to make up a third of the global Supply by 2030. that's quite amazing when you think about it but it does pose new challenges for National Grids in their effort to continually balance supply and demand on a daily basis give an ever-changing weather conditions and environmental factors accurately forecasting fluctuating levels of wind and solar energy is a very difficult task forecast too high and end up with a shortfall of wind and solar more fossil fuel sources will have to be spun up to meet the demand and as this undoubtedly raises wholesale prices we can expect a small fall in demand also to bring everything back into balance forecast too low and end up with far more wind and solar than expected we can certainly reduce fossil fuel sources but only to a certain point we cannot go below their base load so all this extra Supply will have to be shed somehow to retain the balance and to do that we have to increase demand and this is where wholesale price plunges come in one of the tariffs octopus energy in the UK provides is called agile and the retail price essentially tracks the wholesale price on an hourly basis like this most of the time the retail price fluctuates between 15 and 35 Pence this is actual data taken on Friday the 30th of June 2023 but look what happened the very next day because of a situation where there was far more wind in the UK than expected agile pricing dropped below 10 pence per kilowatt hour not only that but between 9am and 4 pm and 11 pm and midnight the same day it dropped to zero meaning electricity was totally free then on Sunday agile pricing got even better electricity continued to be free of charge up until 6 a.m it then went negative from 7am to 4 pm what did that mean it meant you were being paid to consume electricity at one point nearly 20 pence per kilowatt hour finally on the Monday things started to return to normal now you might think this kind of situation is rare but here's a chart showing agile pricing over the last six months or so and you can see where prices have plunged during that time including the example we've just covered I believe that with an ever increasing share of wind and solar in the Energy Mix we can expect price plunges to become more and more frequent and if you have a large enough battery and therefore sufficient spare capacity you can capitalize on these plunges when they occur I've made a video on the octopus agile tariff here if you want to find out more about it if you're finding this video useful please could you take a few seconds just now to hit the like button so that others will be able to see it and at the same time if you hit the Subscribe button you'll see all my future videos as soon as they're published and if you're happy to provide some financial support for my work educating as many people as I can about solar and related Technologies there's now an easy way to do that I've created a patreon channel and you can sign up to that here in return you get access to special versions of the utilities I developed starting with a professional edition of the monitoring utility we've been working with in this video and you'll also get to see occasional exclusive videos that I'll be making like this one about my own solar installation your support means a lot to me and I'd like to thank you for that okay shall we take things up another level then demand flexibility schemes consider the situation where demand is forecast to be a lot higher than supply for example in June this year although the main source of fossil fuel in the UK is gas the National Grid was actually readying to fire up coal powered stations which is normally unheard of why was this well it was down to a catalog of things for a start there was a mini Heat Wave which increased demand through increased use of air conditioning systems and other appliances then there was a problem with the interconnector that the UK has with Norway which was only operating at 50 capacity finally there was planned maintenance at one of our largest nuclear power stations at tornes certainly we could increase gas generation by bringing more peaker plants online but only up to a point to cover the remaining demand Gap the only other option is to fire up some Coal Power stations an incredibly expensive thing to do but there is another solution and that is to bring down demand so that it's in line with the available Supply and what's helpful is that we only need to deal with the short period during the day where Peak demand exists here is a typical demand curve in the UK you can see that all we need to do is chop off the peak between 4 pm and 7 pm and this can be achieved through what are called demand flexibility schemes one such scheme was pioneered by octopus energy and trialled in the UK by the National Grid six months ago consumers were paid up to two pounds fifty for every kilowatt hour that they didn't use at certain times of the day that's a whopping 10 times the normal cost of that electricity the way in which that scheme worked was that periodic notices were sent out to Consumers via their energy provider stating that for the next day there would be a saving session say between 5 and 6 PM the time varied for each notice consumers were then invited to reduce their energy consumption as much as they could during those times and payments were made based on the consumer's historical usage at those times there were 13 saving sessions in the trial and octopus reported on their own customers they had seven hundred thousand participants the most consumer engagement of any of the UK energy suppliers and collectively they displaced almost two gigawatt hours of electricity demand which represented about 50 percent of the total UK demand shift during the trial 5.3 million pounds was paid out to octopus customers which was an average of 41 pounds each so this gets me thinking if this is what's possible without a battery what can be done for those with a battery I found this scheme that solar Edge ran at the same time as the UK trial the way it worked was the solar Edge battery would charge up from solar or grid during the day and would continue to supply the home demand as required then during a savings event which generally took place at Peak periods the battery would automatically Force discharge and the home process was managed automatically by solar Edge without the battery owner having to do anything here you can see that solar Edge were paying at least two pounds 50 per kilowatt hour exported so even if your battery was able to export earlier in the day it was better to hold on to that charge until the savings event started with the highly successful demand flexibility trial in the UK now complete I'm expecting to see demand flexibility schemes including battery related schemes becoming perhaps not an everyday but a common experience in the UK and I can see schemes like this being replicated across the World okay we've got one final level to jump to then virtual power plants everything we've discussed so far has been around individual solar and Battery owners managing their own Affairs programming their systems to make use of load shifting time of use tariffs price plungers and hopefully soon demand flexibility Services all very consumer focused though on the other side you may already be aware that large-scale commercial battery storage systems like this one in East Yorkshire and the UK are being constructed all the time all across the world this particular plant has a 196 megawatt hour capacity and is the largest one in Europe to date such systems are highly profitable because their size makes them notable to the National Grid and therefore a powerful asset for balancing purposes and this allows those systems to derive a healthy profit through lucrative trade deals but what if you allowed a third-party organization to take control of all or part of your own battery it would then become part of a massive highly distributed battery system called a virtual power plant and it would be in the same league as the other commercial battery system commanding the same energy trade deals for which you would receive a share of the profits let's say you and a couple of hundred thousand other battery owners were each willing to delegate control of 10 kilowatt hours of battery capacity that would equal the battery capacity of the system we just saw and given that there are roughly 24 million homes in the UK it would only take a small percentage of those homes to facilitate a virtual power plant of one gigawatt hour or more especially now that battery prices are starting to come down again and people are buying larger home battery capacities add to that Technologies like vehicle to grid where your EV battery becomes part of your home installation when it's parked on the drive and I think you can see where things might go it's still early days with virtual power plants but I believe there's a huge amount of potential coming and investing in a larger battery than you might do otherwise could turn out to be very profit for you this video is getting a bit long now so I'll cover some things to consider when looking for the ideal battery in a future video I hope you've enjoyed what you've seen so far though and that it's got you thinking I'd just like to say thanks for all your support which is helping me to help others benefit from solar technology see you next time [Music]