Thank you Hamwich. In that case, I can't see any point to them.
The point to having batteries is that without a FiT contract in place you don't earn any money from solar power you export to the grid. So instead you stick it in the battery to maximise your own use of it.
So for example yesterday we were able to make use of 97% of all the power we generated, spreading that use out right through the 24 hours rather than just when the sun was shining. Yesterday we used 12.4KWh of power of which only 1.1KWh came from the grid.
The point to having any solar system is as a hedge against future price increases. My supplier is Ecotricity, who are notoriously expensive, you only go to them if you consider your ethical position to be more important than the amount you pay for electricity. When we had our system installed in late 2020 w were paying 20p/KWh and the payback period was getting on for 20 years.
Now we are paying 40p a unit and the payback period has halved.
I (having spent the last 14 years of my career working in the electricity supply industry) give absolutely no credence to the idea that energy prices will ever drop back. We have spent the last 35 years since privatisation paying artificially low prices because the strategic investment bit that CEGB did so well has been stripped out in favour of imported gas. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. I fully expect we'll be paying £1/KWh within 3 years, probably less.
The best time to install any micro-generation capability is 5 years ago, with Tomoorow being the best alternative.
