How long before Solar Holy Grail? Affordable batteries.

Stuart Wright

...by which I mean how long before we can buy affordable (by which I mean under a grand) batteries to supplement a solar panel installation which store enough juice to power the house at night?
Lots of variables there, like how much the panels produce to charge the batteries and how much power we need at night.
I'd be surprised if there are solar panel systems which are efficient enough to generate all the power we need from the 8 hours of dim daylight we have during the winter.  Enough to last during the 16 hours of darkness.
But that's what we need.
How long before the tech gets us there, do you think?

neilball

Well with the number of days in winter that my 4kW array generates less than 1kWh then solar would be no good for this even if batteries were brilliant. I'd need at least 5x the capacity of panels to make something like this work for me and even then I'd be able to use the power generated rather than needing to store it (I can use upto 60kWh in really cold weather as I'm all-electric here). However if battery storage was both affordable, did not require something the size of the average shed, and easily work with multiple generating inputs then I'd be tempted to add a wind turbine too (I'd have no problem generating a significant amount from wind, and not be limited to daytime-only generation). My annual lechy bill is around £1.2k currently, so costs would have to drop significantly before it became cost effective to invest in the tech needed though!

SteveCritten

I could maybe double my solar output with my roof space and my panels are only 17% efficient but I remember reading about some that were being developed (3-4 years ago) that were double that. So maybe with those and doubling amount of panels plus a wind turbine I may be able to make it worthwhile to get battery's as my heating is gas. All I need now is a river diverting through my garden .