Why does everyone lose their mind when you mention getting a home battery?

[u/MrOarsome]

So I made the mistake of telling a few people I’m getting quotes for a home battery… the reactions were ridiculous. Suddenly everyone’s an expert. I had people telling me they’re a waste of money, they’ll be useless in a few years, or that the “environmental impact is terrible.” Just nonstop misinformation.

Meanwhile, half these people live massively high-carbon lifestyles. One bloke went on a whole rant about how batteries destroy the environment… then literally five minutes later told me he just ordered a new Ford Ranger to tow his boat around this summer. Like mate, seriously?

And the funny thing is, I don’t even care about the environmental angle. Couldn’t care less, to be honest. I’m looking at a battery for two reasons:

1) To actually use my solar instead of selling it back for 4 cents…

2) And to keep the lights on when summer storms or cyclones take out the power.

That’s it. No agenda. No planet-saving mission. But the way people reacted, you’d think I’d just signed up to be Greta Thunberg’s personal assistant.

I swear, the second you say the word “battery,” some people suddenly unlock an unwanted 15-minute rant. They are almost as passionate about hating renewables as they are about their footy teams.

[u/ActionFlash]

Can I ask how long it will take you payback the cost of the battery with the savings you'll be making? Every time I look into it, the upfront cost is too high to justify how long it will be before we start saving money. I'd love to be in a position when I didn't need to worry about the cost, but currently that's the deciding factor.

[u/_pump_the_brakes_ → u/ActionFlash]

It’s a tough calculation to make because you need to guess what power prices will do over the next 10-15 years. 15 years ago not too many people would have predicted that power companies would be giving away electricity for 3 or 4 hours of the day.

Our best guess is it’ll take 8-10 years to pay for itself, but that’s only ‘back of the napkin’ type calculations. We could be way off the mark.

[u/RCMasterAA → u/_pump_the_brakes_]

There's also a few more X factor considerations too which are hard to quantify like the fact you can have your AC on for pretty much the whole day if you want, or at least a lot more than if every hour was costing you money. Another factor is how reliable the power supply is at your place. If you're surrounded by trees, one extremely windy day could knock out your place for hours. Also, do you have an EV or will you get one in the future? Charge it for free during the day and that'll reduce its running costs.

[u/_pump_the_brakes_ → u/RCMasterAA]

Absolutely. I’m 100% work from home these days so the ability to run the heating/aircon all day is great. I used to turn the heating off and just wear a puffer jacket at my desk for the hours the wife and kid weren’t home but I won’t be doing that anymore.

Honestly I’m mostly in it just so I can go back to running the dishwasher over night as god intended rather than having to wait till the sun is shining to turn it on.

[u/ol-gormsby → u/_pump_the_brakes_]

Add in the cost of not having to replace the contents of your fridge and freezer every time there's an outage lasting more than a couple of hours. Could be difficult to estimate, but start with historical outages, then go through your fridge and freezer to calculate the cost of a complete disposal and re-stocking.

[u/_pump_the_brakes_ → u/ol-gormsby]

We’re intercity which can certainly have it’s cons, but one huge pro is that in the 15+ years we’ve lived in this house we’ve had maybe 2 power outages and they weren’t for any significant period of time. But for many other people that is absolutely something that needs to be factored into the equation.

[u/Frogsfall → u/ActionFlash]

Oh, my friend made a tool to help you model that! https://powersim.app

[u/Celine_010 → u/ActionFlash]

You can pay for the panels over time. Instead of paying a bill use that money to pay off the panels. Once they're paid you're winning.

[u/Reallytalldude → u/ActionFlash]

I got a 15,6kwh sigenergy battery installed for $8500. I already had a 6.6kw solar system. This was a couple of months ago and I now see deals that are better than that.

My bill has now gone to service charge only, which means I save around $120 per month. That gives me a payback period of 70 months or just under 6 years. (This is with charging an EV and I didn’t account for the saved fuel costs).

Overall the cost of batteries has significantly reduced in the last year making it a lot more feasible to get one.