So we moved into our house around 12 months ago. We have two panels on the roof, the previous owner had them fitted, I believe he had them under some sort of disability grant scheme for his late wife.

We are a large family of 6, in a 5 bed property and whilst our electricity requirement is currently relatively low, estimate 3500 kWh a year, no EV or anybody WFH, but this will of course increase as our children age.

We want to consider expanding on the panels and added a battery but have NO idea where to start or work out if it’s even worth it, viable etc. There seems to be so many adverts and companies offering it, where do you even begin? We are with Octopus energy.

After Milton my 7.6 kW SolarEdge array sat dead for six days. I skipped the battery in 2019 to save money.

Half my fault. The installer did bring up a battery and I said later. Now I'm pricing the later.

What I'd back up is the fridge, router, ceiling fans and one mini-split in the bedroom. Roughly 0.7 kW average, so around 17 kWh a day. A 10 kWh battery covers about 14 hours, then it's a brick unless the array can refill it. A normal sunny day gives me more than I'd use, so I think recharging during the outage matters more than piling on kWh.

Where it gets messy: my inverter isn't battery-ready, so SolarEdge BAT means swapping it, and that's a big slice of the quote. Powerwall 3 can be AC coupled to what I have, I'm told, but the installer wouldn't promise the array keeps charging it with the grid down. EcoFlow TITAN 5000 Plus is modular, 5 kWh blocks up to 30, and it hasn't shipped, so a spec sheet is all I have.

Both SolarEdge BAT and EcoFlow TITAN 5000 Plus seem like solid options. TITAN has a lower starting price, which makes it look like better value, but I'm still weighing the overall setup and what makes the most sense for my home.