Want to minimize your home’s carbon footprint? Go for solar, forget the battery

Ars Technica » Scientific Method 2017-02-03

Enlarge / 3d rendering of modern house interior with independent energy storage battery system.

Batteries are a big deal these days in renewable energy—utilities are investing in grid-scale lithium-ion battery installations to help smooth out the intermittency of renewables. But smaller, residential battery installations have also been on the rise thanks in part to Tesla’s new Powerwall 2 and Sonnen’s recent entry into the US market.

But a new study published in Nature Energy from University of Texas researchers Robert L. Fares and Michael E. Webber suggest that people who buy home batteries should carefully consider their motivations for the purchase. For homes that remain grid-tied, batteries may actually increase annual energy consumption for a household by 324–591 kWh. Depending on the region a house is in, using more power could lead to increased carbon emissions.

Instead, the researchers concluded, homeowners that want to help reduce emissions as much as possible are better off getting solar panels and selling that power back to the grid—at least in most markets.

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