For many solar shoppers, adding a home battery can seem like the obvious next step. But one homeowner says skipping that costly upgrade — and installing a public electric vehicle charger instead — has worked out just fine.
In a Reddit post, the homeowner argued that batteries are not always the best financial choice for every setup.
What happened?
On Reddit, a homeowner described running an 18.6-kilowatt solar array with a 17-kilowatt Huawei inverter and no battery bank. Rather than put money into storage, the homeowner installed a public EV charger that tourists use and set the price at 45 cents per kilowatt.
According to the post, the system generated 116.42 kilowatt-hours that day while drawing just 4.45 kilowatt-hours from the grid. Of the rest, 69.63 kilowatt-hours were used directly from solar, and 46.79 kilowatt-hours were exported to the grid.
The homeowner wrote, "That means 93.99% of my daily power came directly from the sun."
According to the homeowner, the system generated 7.49 megawatt-hours over three months, suggesting that, at least for this property, solar without a battery is still delivering strong results.
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Why does it matter?
Home batteries can be incredibly useful, especially for backup power during outages or for homes that want to store more solar energy for nighttime use. But they can also add thousands of dollars to the upfront cost of going solar.
For some households, that extra expense may stretch the payback period enough to make a project harder to justify. The best clean energy setup depends on how a home uses electricity, local utility rules, and whether the owner has other ways to get value from excess power.
What can I do?
Excess solar generation can be used in other ways beyond batteries. For some people, that could mean charging an EV at home, shifting appliance use to sunny hours, or exploring whether a charger or other electrified upgrade adds more value than a battery.
Getting multiple quotes and asking installers to model several scenarios — with and without storage — can make the decision clearer. That kind of comparison can help homeowners avoid overspending while still capturing the biggest benefits of solar.
As the Redditor put it, "Every single time I talked about installing my system, the internet 'experts' and some of my buddies came out of the woodwork to tell me the exact same thing: 'If you don't get a battery, the whole system is completely pointless.'" After three months, they said they were "glad I ignored them" and added: "People need to stop treating batteries like a mandatory rule of thumb."
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