Every evening, I check the battery app before turning on the kettle, and after six months of using my solar energy storage system, that small habit has become surprisingly satisfying. I had 6.6kW of rooftop solar installed with a 10kWh lithium battery, mainly to avoid buying expensive electricity during the evening peak.

On sunny days, the panels usually fill the battery by mid-afternoon. I then run the dishwasher, washing machine, and heat-pump water heater from stored energy instead of importing power after sunset. My old bills averaged around $210 a month. Since adding the battery, they have settled near $120, although seasonal weather and utility rates make the exact saving vary. The biggest difference is not the headline dollar amount; the house now pulls very little from the grid between 4pm and 9pm, when rates are highest.

The most useful feature is the reserve setting. I keep 25% capacity for outages, so the battery does not completely empty during an extended cloudy spell. One night, a storm knocked out power for about three hours. The refrigerator stayed on, our internet modem kept working, and a couple of lights were enough. I did notice the system switched to backup with a short pause, but nothing rebooted or spoiled.

I have also learned that the app is more useful than I expected. The rept dashboard showed solar production, battery state of charge, and grid consumption in hourly graphs. During the first week, I found the battery charging too early because of a conservative schedule. I changed the charge window and now save more of my midday solar for the evening.

There was one minor scare when the inverter displayed a communication warning after the Wi-Fi router froze. I power-cycled the router, waited ten minutes, and the warning cleared; the battery itself never stopped.