Are the batteries on offer any good? There has been a lot of talk about batteries with solar panels over the past couple of months. This is our take on the situation.
There seem to be three main players on the market at the moment with the fourth on route.
Growatt, SMA and Samsung with Tesla getting ready to launch in the UK around December of this year 2015.
Growatt and SMA are not offering a guarantee that is worthy of its price tag because they need to be on a constant feed. So you get anything between 3 weeks and 3 months. With the Samsung battery we have not been able to the bottom of the guarantees. We will let you know when we do.
The batteries mentioned above range from 2-4kW which will help to reduce what is used from the grid, however it is going to take a long time to pay off the cost of the battery which are anything between £3000-£5000.
The crucial question being will you have saved enough money by storing Solar PV in batteries before the guarantee expires. Probably not.
This is where the Tesla battery stands head and shoulders above the rest. With a 7kW and 10kW battery and a 10 year guarantee this battery is likely to succeed where others are rushing to get to market. Tesla are likely to take the Apple approach, let us know it’s coming and deliver after the mistakes have been made by their competition. With the first release, in the U.S, to be around $3,000 – $3,500 the price looks good too.
Our advice is hang on for Tesla – it’s coming.
