Why home batteries make sense in Texas


October 5, 2020 | 3min read

Texas’ deregulated electrical utility market puts consumers in the driver’s seat when it comes to determining how much you pay for electricity. Consumers have a wide range of options when choosing their retail electric provider. Each of those providers offers a wide range of plans, some of which could provide substantial savings if you have a solar system with home batteries. 

Save with time-of-use billing and home batteries in Texas

The rate you pay for electricity under time-of-use (TOU) billing depends on what time of day you are using electricity. The off-peak rates in a TOU plan are usually much lower than the rates offered in flat rate plans or tiered rate plans. But the rates charged during peak rate hours are often much higher than the rates charged in flat or tiered rate plans. Home batteries are an easy solution. You simply power your home from the batteries during peak rate hours and avoid those expensive peak rates entirely. The batteries also provide power to your home during a blackout.

Batteries may make sense with net metering

The terms that Texas utilities offer net metering under vary with the utility. If your utility company offers net metering that does not compensate you at the full retail rate that they charge for electricity, then it may make sense to store and use more of the electricity that your solar system generates. This is the case if your utility credits you for the electricity you supply to the grid at their avoided cost rate. 

A utility’s avoided-cost rate is the rate that the utility company pays power plants for the electricity that the utility buys from the power plant. For example, if a utility company charges you $0.11 per kilowatt-hour, but they buy power from power plants at $0.04 per kilowatt-hour, that would mean that you are getting paid $0.07 per kilowatt-hour less than the rate that you are being charged for electricity. In that case, home batteries may be worth it because they are saving you $0.07 per kilowatt-hour for every kilowatt-hour of power that you’d normally sell to the utility company at its avoided-cost rate.

Freedom Forever installs home batteries in Texas

If you are ready to generate, store, and use more of your own power, Freedom Forever is ready to help. We install the Tesla Powerwall, which is stackable. You can have as much storage capacity as you want, even enough to provide all of the power you need. If you are thinking of going solar, you can count on 25 years of reliable solar power thanks to Freedom’s 25-year performance guarantee.

We guarantee that your solar power system will meet its promised production amount for 25 years.

Freedom Forever guarantees that the solar system will produce the electricity promised with our 25-Year Production Guarantee.  We will even pay you for any shortfall from our fault. The amount you would be compensated at will be listed in your contract with us.

Ready to go solar? Call us at 800-685-1850 or click below to get started.