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Solar Battery Storage Calculator

How many batteries do you actually need? Pick the appliances you want to keep running during an outage and how long you want them to last — we'll size the battery bank, count the units, and estimate the installed cost.

Selected load: — kWh/day

With solar recharging each day, real backup lasts far longer than this — see the note in the results.

The 30% federal residential credit applies only to systems placed in service by Dec 31, 2025.

Uses 90% usable depth of discharge and 90% round-trip efficiency for lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. Installed hardware at ~$1,000/kWh plus a base install cost. Estimates only.

Recommended battery capacity
  • Backed-up load
  • Target autonomy
  • Usable energy needed
  • Battery units
  • Total nameplate
  • Usable capacity
  • Backup runtime (no sun)
  • Hardware
  • Install & electrical
  • Gross cost
  • Federal tax credit
  • Net cost

Select appliances to size your battery.

Get battery quotes near me → Size the solar panels too →

How this calculator works

Battery backup is sized from the energy your chosen loads use in a day, not from your whole electricity bill. We add up the typical daily draw of each appliance during an outage, multiply by how many days you want to ride through without sun, then divide by the usable fraction of a battery (about 81% after depth-of-discharge and round-trip losses).

The result is rounded up to whole battery units. If you have solar, the panels recharge the battery every day the sun is out, so a system sized for "1 day" of loads can keep essentials running indefinitely through a typical outage — the autonomy figure is really about cloudy stretches and overnight.

Does a battery qualify for the tax credit?

Battery storage of 3 kWh or more was eligible for the 30% federal residential credit — but only for systems placed in service by December 31, 2025. For 2026 and later installs the residential credit no longer applies. Check your eligibility →

Backup power options

Getting a home battery quote from an installer takes time. For portable backup, essential-loads-only setups, or a stopgap before a full install, these brands ship direct: