There are a few ways to store solar. The most common is in a battery so the power can be used at a later time in the day or at night or saved for an outage. With a battery the home or business uses the solar direct from the panels and if there is any excess this is stored to be used at a time when you need it. The other concept is virtual storage or feed in. This is where in a cost sense you sell power to the grid at a certain rate and then you buy it back at a later time if needed. The virtual storage/ feed in depends on the agreement but generally you will only get about ⅓ to ½ on the feed in vs what they would charge back. This is however a good way to make use of excess solar that you would otherwise not use.

Yes, it can. When the system is “on grid” where your home or business has an existing connection to the grid. The solar will work by creating as much electricity as possible. This electricity can power all the items in your home or business with any excess going back to the grid. If the solar is not producing enough electricity or it is nighttime your home or business will simply draw from the grid. This process is virtual and seamless so there is no physical changeover of technology. The solar and the grid synchronize together and work in harmony.

Yes, they are. If you are looking for outage protection, they will deliver savings and power outage with up to 3 yr pay back vs a generator. For pure savings it is closer to 5-7yrs.

There are a lot of different types of solar batteries as in effect any battery can be coupled with solar. The safest battery at present in mass use would be the LFP or LIFEPO lithium batteries. These are very safe and very common.

The battery enclosure will dictate if the battery can be installed in an external location. Generally, as much protection to any equipment as possible from the environment is a good idea however there are many batteries that have enclosures rated for installation outside.

Yes, all batteries can be recycled. Each different type of battery technology has a different recycling path. The battery recycling industry is very mature so almost all battery manufacturers now have an end-of-life model to show the process to deliver the battery into recycling.

Solar batteries take the excess solar energy created from panels during the day and store that power in the battery cells. Then when more power than the panels can produce is required or at night for example when the solar energy is not being generated the batteries are called on to deliver the storied energy back into the system to be used as energy.

We would say the best battery for solar would be a lithium or similar battery at this stage. Lithium offers the most flexible on life and size. IT is also one of the safest battery types.