Store your own solar
A panel without storage sells its surplus for pence and buys it back at the full import rate hours later. A battery keeps that energy for when you actually need it.
Commercial · Agricultural · Homes
Commercial battery storage for North East businesses
Quick answer
Battery storage in the North East, for homes and businesses:
- A battery does three jobs: it stores your solar for the evening, shaves the priced grid peaks, and — if specified — keeps essential circuits alive in a power cut.
- It pays best where there is evening or overnight load — hospitality, cold storage, shift work, refrigeration; a strict nine-to-five has less to shift.
- We fit Fox ESS, from three-phase hybrids to liquid-cooled T-MAX cabinets, with better than 89% round-trip efficiency.
- Lithium iron phosphate cells are commonly rated around 6,000 cycles — but we plan around a 10–12 year working life and put the replacement in any payback case.
- Sized from your metered usage, not a headline capacity — the smaller battery that cycles hard beats the big one that sits idle.
- Storage paired with your solar is exempt from business rates to 31 March 2035; homes and businesses both get a free assessment.
Figures: Fox ESS datasheets and 2025 import-price data.
For your business
Stop selling cheap and buying dear
A battery earns its keep on a commercial site in three ways: it stores cheap or self-generated power for the expensive evening, it discharges through the priced grid peaks, and it can cap your peak demand so a growing site stays inside its agreed supply capacity. Manufacturing businesses averaged around 17–19p per kWh for imported electricity through 2025, while exported units typically earn a fraction of that.
It pays best where there is evening or overnight load — hospitality, cold storage, shift work, anywhere with refrigeration. A strict nine-to-five that already uses most of its generation has less to shift, and we will tell you that from your meter data before anything is priced. Capacity headroom is a problem our EV charging work runs into weekly.
- Load-shifting Move lunchtime surplus to evening demand — the difference between import and export price, every day.
- Peak-shaving Discharge through the weekday red-band hours most businesses never itemise.
- Capacity headroom Cap peak demand to fit new machinery or EV chargers inside your agreed supply.
Manufacturer image · Fox ESS For your home
Self-use, and backup where you want it
At home a battery does two of the same jobs it does for a business: it holds your daytime solar back for the evening, so you buy less from the grid after dark, and — if it is specified for it — it can keep essential circuits alive when the power goes off. Backup is a design choice, not a default: a standard system shuts down in a cut for safety, so tell us what genuinely must stay on and we size for that.
We fit Fox ESS at home too, sized from how your home actually uses electricity rather than a headline capacity, and the survey is free.
- Store your solar for the evening Use more of what your panels make instead of exporting it for pence.
- Backup for the circuits that matter Specified where you want it — lights, fridge, broadband — not assumed.
- Sized from your usage Fox ESS, matched to your home’s real demand. Free survey first.
Three jobs
What a battery actually does
Storage costs real money and wears out faster than the panels, so it has to earn its place. Here is how it does — and we will say plainly when it does not.
Shave the priced peaks
Network charges are banded by time of day; the weekday late-afternoon “red band” is priced many times higher than overnight. A battery discharging through it cuts a line most businesses never itemise.
Backup, by design
A standard grid-tied system shuts off in a power cut for safety. Specified for it, a battery isolates and holds a defined set of critical circuits — refrigeration, IT, security — for a defined time.
Our preferred platform
Fox ESS, by the numbers
We install Fox ESS across the commercial range. The model-by-model detail — capacities and warranty terms — lives on our Fox ESS product page, where every figure is taken from the manufacturer’s own datasheets.
>89%
Round-trip efficiency
manufacturer-quoted
~6,000
Full charge cycles
LiFePO4 cells
10–12 yr
Planned working life
battery & inverter
3-phase
Hybrid up to T-MAX cabinets
scales by parallel connection
Practical, not romantic
Why we fit Fox ESS
We install Fox ESS from three-phase hybrids with stackable battery towers on smaller commercial buildings up to the T-MAX line of all-in-one, liquid-cooled cabinet systems built for factories, logistics sites and EV charging hubs. The manufacturer quotes better than 89% round-trip efficiency — the number that decides how much of a stored unit you actually get back. Every figure lives on our Fox ESS product page, taken from the datasheets.
Chemistry and lifespan, stated straight: these are lithium iron phosphate systems, with cells commonly rated around six thousand full cycles — comfortably past a decade of daily work. Even so, we plan around a 10–12 year working life for any battery or inverter, and any payback case we show you has the eventual replacement in it. The panels above the battery will outlast it; anyone telling you otherwise about the battery is overselling.
- Native operating modes Peak shaving, load management and PV-storage control run natively, not through bolt-ons.
- Scales by parallel connection Capacity grows with the site instead of being guessed at on day one.
- Cloud monitoring as standard You and we can both see what the system is doing.
Not a brochure
Sized from your data
Battery sizing has two numbers, and conflating them is the commonest specification mistake we see. A peak-shaving battery needs power; an overnight load-shifter needs energy; a backup system needs both, but only for the circuits that matter.
We would rather fit the smaller system that cycles hard every day than the impressive one that sits half-idle. An oversized battery is not a safety margin; it is capital doing nothing.
- Kilowatt-hours set the duration How long the battery can run — what an overnight load-shifter needs.
- Kilowatts set the power How much it can carry at once — what a peak-shaving battery needs.
- From your metered profile The actual shape of your usage, not an average.
What changes
With a battery, vs without
The same site, the same solar — this is what storage changes about where your energy goes, hour by hour.
| Without a battery | With a battery | |
|---|---|---|
| Daytime solar surplus | Exported for pence | Stored, used at the evening import rate |
| Evening & overnight demand | Bought at the full import rate | Covered from stored energy |
| Peak “red-band” charges | Paid in full | Discharged through the peak |
| Power cut | System shuts off (anti-islanding) | Essential circuits held up, if specified |
| Site capacity headroom | Limited by your agreed supply | Peak demand capped |
Without a battery
- Daytime solar surplus
- Exported for pence
- Evening & overnight demand
- Bought at the full import rate
- Peak “red-band” charges
- Paid in full
- Power cut
- System shuts off (anti-islanding)
- Site capacity headroom
- Limited by your agreed supply
With a battery
- Daytime solar surplus
- Stored, used at the evening import rate
- Evening & overnight demand
- Covered from stored energy
- Peak “red-band” charges
- Discharged through the peak
- Power cut
- Essential circuits held up, if specified
- Site capacity headroom
- Peak demand capped
The contractor behind the cabinet
Storage, wired in by the electrical contractor
A battery that is specified for backup isolates from the grid and carries a defined set of critical circuits — refrigeration, IT, security, a milking parlour — for a defined time. What it is not, unless deliberately engineered that way, is a whole-site uninterruptible supply; that is a different design conversation, and one this firm can actually have, because generator and UPS backup has been part of our electrical work for decades.
On the paperwork: an export-capable battery goes through the same G99 application as a solar array, handled the same way — submitted early, agreed before commissioning. If you are adding storage to an existing solar system, the original connection agreement usually needs revisiting; bring it to the survey and we will tell you on the spot. On tax, battery storage has no single statutory answer — put it in front of your accountant, and we will supply the figures and the specification they ask for.
- Backup is engineered, not assumed — we size for the circuits you tell us must not go dark.
- Generator and UPS backup has been part of our electrical work for decades.
- The G99 application to Northern Powergrid is submitted early and agreed before commissioning.
- Storage paired with your solar is exempt from business rates to 31 March 2035.
Battery questions, answered here
Will a battery keep us running through a power cut?
Only if it was designed to — a standard grid-tied system disconnects in an outage by law, so backup has to be specified, not assumed. A backup-capable design isolates from the grid and carries your chosen critical circuits for a defined period. Decide what genuinely cannot stop — refrigeration, servers, livestock systems — and we will design and quote around that list.
What size commercial battery do we need?
The honest answer is a shape, not a number: it comes from your metered usage profile, your tariff’s time bands and what you want the battery to do. As a sighting shot, load-shifting batteries usually land somewhere between the size of your typical evening consumption and your solar surplus — but we have seen the data change that answer by a factor of two in both directions, which is exactly why we start with the data.
Do commercial batteries get the business-rates exemption too?
Yes — storage is named alongside generation in the exemption, so a battery serving your onsite solar is exempt until 31 March 2035, applied automatically at valuation. A battery with no onsite generation attached is the grey area; ask us and we will give you a straight read on your configuration.
How long will a commercial battery actually last?
Plan on 10–12 years, and treat anything labelled "lifetime" with suspicion. Cell ratings in the several-thousand-cycle class support a decade-plus of daily cycling, but a battery is working electronics, not roof steel — it will need replacing while the panels above it carry on. Our payback modelling includes that replacement; make sure any competing quote does the same.
The next step is data, not a deposit. Send us a recent bill and, if you have it, your consumption data — we will tell you whether storage earns its place on your site, and show the working either way. And if the answer today is that it does not, you will hear that too, with the numbers that would need to change before it did.
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