People living off the grid have done this for years. The will use wind or solar power and then store the extra electricity as either hydrogen or inside lead acid batteries for later use. Now, Panasonic has developed a home lithium ion battery that will rival all others for massive storage of home electricity.
Panasonic is promoting this battery for homeowners who already have solar or wind power in place or will in the very near future. And, this battery will surely store such energy.
But, one facet of this new Panasonic lithium ion home battery that is not being talked about is its value to every homeowner and not just those who are using renewable energy. What is so exciting is that homeowners will now have the ability to charge the home battery during off-peak hours from the power company when the rates are the lowest and use this battery power when the rates are the highest.
This means you don’t even have to go wind or solar to save green. If homeowners were to do this it would not only save them money but more evenly spread out the energy usage on the grid. This would also help the proliferation of wind to grid and solar to grid technology, which is intermittent, if homeowners were equipped to store this intermittent energy and use it as needed.
The only challenge now is bringing the cost of this home battery down to consumer-friendly levels. But, Panasonic has a history of doing just this and in a very short time both you and me could be saving money, storing our own energy and using it as needed around our homes.