No need for cold showers
Suppose a manufacturer made a simple home energy storage module that cost about half the price of a Battery Energy Storage System with similar capacity.
The module would be designed to store 10 kWh of output from a rooftop solar PV system - avoiding the need to export the 10 kWh for just a few cents for a feed-in-tariff. If your Feed-in-Tariff is 5 cents per kWh, you would forego this income by saving the energy and not exporting it. (This costs 50 cents per day for the 10 kWh that is stored in the module).
The module would avoid the need to purchase about the same amount of energy that it stored each day. If the retail price is 40 cents per kWh that you buy, then you could save this expense by using the 10 kWh of stored energy. (This saves $4 per day for the 10 kWh stored in the module).
A saving of $3.50 per day adds up to about $1,260 a year. In 5 years you should expect to save over $6,000 in energy bills.
This saving is about the expected cost of the Home Energy Storage Module that could store 10 kWh.
The energy stored in the Home Energy Storage Module provides enough energy each day to heat hot water used on average by a household of 3 (around 60 litres of hot water per person each day).
Because this stored energy is very cheap rooftop solar PV energy that would have to be exported for a low Feed-in-Tariff if it was not stored, there is no need, and little additional saving, in upgrading to a Hot Water Heat Pump System that costs around $5,500.
The cost of a battery and a heat pump can be avoided with a much cheaper, and simpler appliance to store surplus solar PV electricity.
See for example "heatBoxx : Optimized & effective heat storage made to measure", an application using phase change materials such as soy wax to store thermal energy to provide hot water.
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