Eighteen months ago, I installed a 10-kWh home battery beside my inverter, and the difference has been most noticeable after sunset. Before that, I sent almost all of my evening electricity back to the grid at expensive peak rates. Now the battery charges from my rooftop solar panels during the afternoon and powers our refrigerator, lights, Wi-Fi, and television through dinner.

My utility bill has fallen from roughly $185 to $110 or $120 per month during the warmer season, although I am careful not to claim the battery pays for itself overnight. The best solar batteries for solar panels, in my experience, are not necessarily the biggest ones; useful software and sensible capacity matter more.

I chose a lithium iron phosphate solar battery with a 10-kWh usable capacity because our household usually needs only six to eight kWh after dark. On sunny days, the battery reaches full charge by about 3:30 p.m. and avoids grid power until early morning. On cloudy days, I let the system keep a 20-percent reserve, so we still have backup power for the router and freezer during brief outages. That reserve setting was a small lesson: maximizing self-consumption isn't always the same as maximizing comfort.

We had one minor troubleshooting moment last winter when the battery stopped discharging at 9:00 p.m., even though the app showed plenty of stored energy. I checked the breaker first, then discovered a firmware update had changed the operating mode to backup-only. Switching it back to self-consumption fixed everything, and customer support confirmed the setting within a few hours.

Since then, I glance at the monitoring app every few days, but I rarely touch the controls. For me, it shifts usage away from peak pricing without changing our daily routine.