Comment by Filligree
6 months ago
You absolutely can put multiple batteries on one inverter. The limiting factor is the DC bus bar and breakers, not the inverter, which just needs to be sized to consumption.
6 months ago
You absolutely can put multiple batteries on one inverter. The limiting factor is the DC bus bar and breakers, not the inverter, which just needs to be sized to consumption.
Yes there's nothing stopping you, but economically a given kW battery installation stores about 4 hours of power.
There's 4 to 6 hours of peak renewable energy per day.
If you add more batteries, you increase power and energy at the same time and ratio: so for any practical home battery system you're cycling the cells daily, which means you your power for charging must match.
If you put more batteries on one inverter, then you're scaling a lot of other costs (BMS, bus bars and space) but you'll never actually be able to utilize that capacity - it'll sit idle most of the time because you can't get it in and out of the cells fast enough.
Well, I suppose our perspectives differ. My own solar installation is off-grid, so the battery pack is sized to last for 4-7 days. I don't have the luxury of tapping the grid if they tap out, and running the generator's quite expensive.
Are your figures, notably 4-6 hours of generation, overlooking the potential for home battery owners to buy power in during off-peak (cheaper) periods, for either their own usage, or for selling back to the grid, at other times?
I've costed it and it doesn't work out. But you can realize why without doing the calculations: unlike solar, batteries aren't surface area limited. So better capitalized producer can achieve better economies of scale and just build warehouses of the things to do exactly that. Which is what they do - and thus off peak power trends towards a tiny margin over the warranted kWh cost of a battery.
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