The Home Battery Lab: Creating the smartest home battery on the planet
Can we create the smartest home battery ever? The idea is simple: we take an existing home battery and make it as smart as possible.
- Real battery, real tests
- Home Assistant powered
- Hands-on testing
We are not building a completely new battery. Instead, we are adding smart controls, home automation and software to the existing system. Step by step, we will add new features, test them in real life and see how far we can push a regular home battery.
Smarter solutions for real home battery problems
We want to solve common problems people run into when using a home battery. In real life, a battery does not always behave exactly how you want it to. It might discharge at the wrong time or fail to respond properly to what is happening elsewhere in your home.
In this series, we will look for the easiest ways to solve those kinds of problems. We will test each idea ourselves, thoroughly explain how it works and show whether it actually improves the way the battery behaves in that situation.
Everything we learn will be shared on this page. That way, you can use the same ideas to make your own home battery smarter, more flexible and better suited for your needs.
Find the problem
We start with a real situation where a home battery does not behave exactly how we want it to.
Build and test
We connect software, automation and smart controls and test the solution in a real home environment.
Share the result
We explain what worked, what did not and how you could use the same idea with your own home battery.
Our first experiment: Charging your EV without draining your home battery
For our first Home Battery Lab Experiment, we are starting with a common problem: keeping your home battery out of your EV charging session.
Indevolt SolidFlex 3000 + Home Assistant
We will use the Indevolt Solidflex 3000 and connect it to a Home Assistant setup that can react to what is happening elsewhere in the house. With home automation, we want the battery to recognise when the EV starts charging and temporarily stop discharging.
Why stop the battery from discharging while charging your EV?
When your EV starts charging at 8 or 10 kW, your home battery may start discharging at the same time. That is not always useful, especially if you would rather save the stored energy for your normal household use. And because an average home battery may only cover around 10-15% of a full EV charge, using it for the car often makes only a small difference.
Want to see the complete setup?
See how we connected the battery to Home Assistant and made it react automatically when the EV starts charging.
The next experiment: selling solar power instead of filling your battery when prices are high
Keep the battery in standby
In our next experiment, we are going to make the battery stay in standby during the more expensive morning hours. That way, any surplus solar power can be exported to the grid instead of being stored in the battery.
The battery can still help your home
At the same time, if your home starts using more electricity, the battery can still step in to cover that household demand. The goal is to make the battery react differently depending on both electricity prices and what is happening inside the home.
Explore our other Home Battery Lab experiments
Stop your battery from charging your EV
Use Home Assistant to prevent stored home battery energy from being used when your electric car starts charging.
Export solar energy when prices are high
Keep the battery in standby so surplus solar electricity can be exported when electricity prices are more attractive.
Got an idea?
Have a home battery problem you would like us to solve? Send us your idea and it could become one of our next experiments.
Send us your ideaWhat should we make smart next?
We want to solve as many real-life home battery problems as possible, and that means we also want to hear from you.
If there is something your battery does that annoys you, a situation you would like to automate, or simply a topic you would like to know more about, send us your idea.
We may turn your idea into one of the next Home Battery Lab Experiments and share the solution here so everyone can see.
Discover our latest in-depth home battery reviews
We do more than just experiment with home batteries. We also publish expert, in-depth reviews where we test different home batteries, look closely at the features and compare how they perform.
Be the first to see our next experiment
This page will be the central place for everything we make in The Home Battery Lab. New experiments, automations, practical solutions, reviews and test results will all be collected here as the series grows. Sign up to stay up to date with our latest posts and be the first to see the next ideas we test to make home batteries smarter and more useful in everyday life.