Solar panels generate clean energy throughout daylight hours, but what happens when the sun goes down? This has often been a pitfall for those who invested in PV cells alone, and it’s why we are seeing more and more customers also install battery storage at the same time as the solar cells – transforming a good investment into an exceptional one.
In simple terms, battery storage acts as a sponge, storing excess energy generated from solar cells during the day, so it can be used when the sun goes down, giving businesses and homeowners the option to use their own clean power around the clock.
At MeKo Electrical, we're particularly seeing an increase in interest of these combined solar and battery installations from commercial clients. As with any new technology, it’s developed in maturity in recent years, with prices coming down and capacity and efficiency improving. Modern battery systems can store substantial amounts of energy and respond instantly to demand, ensuring you're always drawing from the most cost-effective power source.
Balancing supply and demand
The need for such a system comes because while your solar panels produce electricity whenever daylight hits them, this period of generation doesn't always line up neatly with when you need the energy – the demand. Your panels might be producing more than you need at midday but nothing by seven in the evening when your nightshift clocks on, or your household is at its busiest.
Battery storage systems allow us to bridge that gap. During periods of surplus generation, excess electricity charges the battery rather than being exported to the grid at low feed-in rates dictated by a third party. When the sun gets lower (or demand increases) the system can then automatically draw power from storage instead, meaning you’re never paying for more peak rate energy than you need to.
Modern battery management systems handle this switching seamlessly, and most come with smartphone apps or web-based dashboards that let you monitor exactly what's being generated, stored, and consumed in real time. For businesses, it’s not uncommon for this to be displayed to customers, highlighting your eco-credentials.
Peak shaving and load shifting: the real savings
For businesses especially, the timing of electricity use matters as much as the volume. Electricity suppliers charge significantly more during peak demand periods, typically the morning and early evening, when pressure on the grid is highest. These peak-rate charges can be several times higher than off-peak tariffs, which means a business drawing heavily from the grid at the wrong time of day is paying far more than it needs to.
Battery storage tackles this in two ways.
Peak shaving means using your stored solar energy to reduce demand from the grid during those expensive peak hours. Rather than drawing full power from the network when rates are highest, you draw from your battery instead, keeping your peak demand charges low. For larger commercial sites, this can have a meaningful impact on your capacity charges and standing charges too, not just your unit rate.
Load shifting takes this even further. On a time-of-use tariff, overnight electricity rates can be very low. A well-configured battery system can charge from the grid during these cheap overnight periods, ready to supply your business through the expensive daytime hours, even on days when solar generation is limited. Combined with solar charging during the day, you end up with a system that's constantly working to find the cheapest available energy source.
Some businesses have reported savings of up to 30 to 50 percent on their electricity costs through an intelligent combination of solar generation and battery storage. The exact figure depends on your usage patterns, tariffs and the size of the system, but the principle holds true regardless: the less you draw from the grid at peak times, the more you save.
The road to resilience and grid independence
There's a second benefit to battery storage that goes beyond the monthly bills and keeping those costs as low as possible – and it’s tied in with reliability.
For domestic users, power cuts are at best annoying, but if you’re working from home, they can be much more disruptive. For businesses and commercial premises, even a short outage can result in lost productivity, disrupted processes, and in some cases, significant operational risk.
With a properly configured battery backup system, your critical systems can continue operating seamlessly during a grid outage. The battery detects the loss of grid power and switches your protected circuits to stored energy, often in milliseconds.
It's worth being realistic about expectations here. A standard home battery won't power your entire property indefinitely during a prolonged outage. But it could keep your essential circuits running and, with a well-sized system and sensible usage, cover you through most of the outages you're likely to experience.
Commercial vs Domestic Battery Solutions
Regardless of the user, fundamentally, the technology is the same. But the scale, spec, and installation considerations differ considerably between commercial and domestic settings.
Domestic systems: Typically ranging from around 5kWh to 20kWh of usable storage, they can provide enough power to cover a significant portion of an average household's evening and overnight demand.
Commercial systems operate on an entirely different scale. A warehouse, farm, school, or manufacturing facility might install anywhere from 50kWh to several hundred kilowatt-hours of storage, often in purpose-built battery enclosures housed outside the main building.
At MeKo, we work with clients at both ends of this spectrum. Whether you're a homeowner looking to get more from your existing solar panels or a business with a serious energy bill that needs a proper strategic review, we'll give you an honest assessment of what would actually work for your site.
Ready to start your energy-resilient future?
If you're already generating solar power and wondering whether battery storage makes sense, or if you're thinking about a combined solar and storage installation from scratch, we're happy to have a straightforward conversation about your options.
We've been helping homes and businesses across Gloucestershire and the South West get more from their electrical systems since 2009, and we always aim to give you practical, honest advice rather than a one-size-fits-all pitch.
and we'll arrange a convenient time to talk through what might work for your property.
Share this post: