Yep, that's me. Cheap battery, reduced my monthly bill by 75%.
this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2026
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Are you just storing electricity from the grid when it's cheaper, or did you do solar as well?
Not the same guy but I'm having both installed right now. I'll be buying cheap electric at night to fill my batteries and running the house all day from that, while exporting and selling anything from the solar as well as any excess.
Every unit I sell is worth 12.5p, the cheap rate is costing me only 5.2p. eventually that export rate will go away, I'm which case I'll be able to be self sufficient about 2/3 of the year.
The best setup would be a dynamic electricity contract and solar panels + batteries + heat pump or airconditioning, optionally EV.
Using only batteries will lead to diminishing returns because of the surge in batteries everywhere, having an overall stabilizing effect on energy prices throughout the day.
Store the excess PV energy in batteries during the day and, at times when electricity is expensive, sell it or use it for home appliances, heating or EV charging.
What’s a “cheap battery” gonna cost me?
I'm the UK, 10kWh from a large brand (sigenergy) costs about £2k, but cheaper brands you can get about 3x the storage for that price.
Thanks! I’m more in the $100’s kind of budget.
What are the drawbacks or tradeoffs for cheaper brands? The recent Lumafield report on lithium ion batteries was horrifying.
Most home storage is Lifepo4, rather than lithium ion.
It's a bit more expensive, and only has 80% of the capacity. In tradeoff, it gains 3-5x the lifespan, and an inability to burst into flames.
Bigger brands tend to be more reliable in capacity and lifespan. Cheap ones are more hit and miss. It might be fine, it might fail after 3 years, rather than 10.
I don't really get it, in the chart "Installed grid-scale battery capacity in gigawatts, 2025"
Europe barely has like 17GW in total but later on below they say:
In Europe, it sees batteries that are already online or nearing completion as likely to benefit most, with capacity seen rising from about 50 gigawatts in 2025 to 75 gigawatts by year-end.
What is this big discrepancy? Is the second part talking about batteries not connected to the grid or something (not grid-scale?)
Seems to be the classic GW vs GWh struggle journalists cannot comprehend.
In 2025, the EU added around 12 GW of extra power output from batteries, and about 25 GWh of energy storage capacity to the already existing infrastructure. Meaning the batteries can output 12 GW of power for more than 2 hours before they are depleted.
Yeah it's a bit confusing. When I hear "battery capacity" I think about GWh not GW but I suppose it isn't "wrong" as it can mean output "capacity" and they did mention "in GW"
Not sure where you're getting the numbers from but I think @DarthFrodo@lemmy.world is right here as in the differences in numbers are probably explained by the fact that the first number is only for batteries used to balance the grid and the other one is more general.
But yeah you do make a good point that we have no clue about actual storage capacity. Still, really strange that EU numbers are so low. I expected way more.
Seems like the first number is just grid-scale battery storage, while the second includes home batteries, which grew faster in the last years. Grid scale takes more time to get approval, build, connect.