>One of the downsides of solar for a lot of people is that they generate their energy when people don’t need it – during the day when people are at work. Most of the energy I use is outside of daylight hours. Reliable, cheap energy storage would help make solar a lot more attractive”
Well, technically if the maximum load period tends to be during the period of day of maximum sunlight and after the batteries come up to or nearing full charge is probably optimum for reducing losses (depending on charge rate profile), this reduces depth of discharge and recombination losses, and increases battery longevity too.
To some extent the larger the battery bank the worse the recombination losses, in the context of not shifting peak demand as mentioned in the paragraph previous.
I suppose in the situation there is more than adequate PV capacity recombination losses don’t really matter, other than recombination cycles and depth contributing to battery AH decline (longevity).
Regards this “…during the day when people are at work…”, for the moment it might be said a modest solar arrangement is better suited to someone being home around midday to take advantage of the sunlight, certainly in the case any sustained consumption comes near = PV output.
This place here we tend to let batteries come up to or near full charge then adjust what we do and power consumption to what the output is as PV output increases then declines with sun angle and conditions (cloud etc), and toward the end of the day reduce load quicker than PV output declines so go into late afternoon and evening with fully charged batteries. This way if it happens there is many consecutive overcast days we go into them with the highest charge possible,and also reduce overall power consumption. Also gives us the most possible power from sunlight available as early as possible in the morning, so, for example, the batteries might fully recharge from the last nights minor consumption by ~10:30am(summer).
Peak PV output here is < 500watts, initial battery capacity was 850AH (@ 12Volts).
I can run lights all night (one above is fluro, other room LED), run this computer all night, have the LCD TV running all night (mosty runs in economy mode), cook toast, and there’s the fridge (half size, better than three star energy rating), but certainly not in winter night after night.
Gas stove, wood fires.
If get a stinking hot late afternoon and evening (haven’t really had any, yet!) and am sick of the heat and want 1,2 or 3 vap coolers going i’ll get the generator going. Vap coolers will try fitting one with variable speed controller later, presently a single one uses 160Watts on low setting, and low is all we ever need, but they’d be fine at 1/3 the speed they operate. Try it and see how warm the motor gets anyway, first.