The power stored in home batteries can be discharged either exclusively for use in the home, or both to the home and back to the grid via the meter. Both options can be set in SMA systems running with the Energy Maximizer or the Energy Planner. In SMA systems where the Sunny Home Manager is in charge, this cannot be set: in these systems, the power cannot be sent back to the grid from the battery.

Is it worthwhile to feed back to the grid from the battery?

Feeding back to the grid from home batteries can be worthwhile at certain times for people with a dynamic energy contract. It is worthwhile if the price you receive for feed-in power is high at that moment, and the home does not need the energy for the time being. A smart system takes into account the expectations for electricity price and consumption needs in the coming hours: it should not be the case that you feed back so much from your batteries that you then have to draw power from the grid again if the price remains high in the meantime. It is especially worthwhile if you have excess capacity in the batteries during a certain period, for example when you are on holiday yourself and the solar panels continue to fill the batteries daily.

Also for those who trade on the imbalance market, it can sometimes be worthwhile to feed back to the grid from the batteries, although it is true that earnings on the imbalance market have been rather disappointing lately. Moreover, SMA has no automatic control for the imbalance market.

A reason to not feed back to the grid from the battery could be that the battery charges and discharges more frequently as a result. This could negatively affect the lifespan. However, SMA Home Storage batteries are specially made to charge and discharge very often, so that shouldn't really be a problem.

Incidentally, if you set that the home battery cannot feed back to the grid, there can still be feed-back, but then only from the solar panels. To stop feed-back completely, you can use the zero-export function.

The default setting is that the home battery only feeds back power to the house, and not to the grid. You change the setting in the following way:

	For the Energy Maximizer click here
	For the Energy Planner click here

Perhaps needless to say: for systems where the Sunny Home Manager is the system manager, we cannot change this setting.