why are electric cars more financially viable than home batteries?
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Electric cars are just more relevant to a larger group of people than home batteries. Cars are useful to a ton of people, but buying electricity off of peak hours isn’t as useful to as many people.
However, home batteries can be financially viable if you live on a grid that has more variable electric costs throughout the day. This is usually due to a grid saturated with solar energy that is very active at noon, but inactive at night. California is a good example of a grid with volatile daily energy prices due to solar power.
The issue with this volatility is that energy is being produced at the time of day when it is least used by the grid: in the afternoon. Typically, peak load occurs in the early evening. So, a home battery can help you ‘buy’ energy at the cheapest rate during the afternoon, and supplement your load at night when you are actually using it. In theory, it is a form of energy arbitrage where you earn relative returns by buying energy you already plan to use, at a discount. A lot of home batteries are designed to do this kind of charging and discharging on a programmed schedule or at set electric rates.
That said, if you live in an area with non-volatile energy prices the battery won’t be very useful. It can serve a function if you run *a lot* of home solar, and you want to be more grid independent. But, from a financial perspective, it likely isn’t worth it.
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