Techknow Ireland

A home battery that doesn't care whether you have solar panels or not? EcoFlow's Stream AC 5000 sounds made for renters and apartments, but can you actually use one in Ireland yet? Can't get solar panels, but still fancy the benefits of a home battery? Maybe you're renting, or you live in an apartment where panels on the roof just aren't happening. Or maybe you've got panels already, and on a good day some of what they make heads out to the grid because the house isn't using

Five kilowatt-hours of storage, room for twelve solar panels and a socket that can keep a heater going in a power cut. Anker's latest Solarbank has reviewers talking, but is it one for Irish homes? Solar panels and a battery sound like a natural pairing. Catch the power when the sun does show up, then use it later instead of buying it in. One kind of home battery tries to make that simpler. The battery and the electronics to connect your panels and your home all live in one b

Fill it up on cheap night-rate electricity, use it in the evening when power is dear, and all you need is a socket. That's the pitch for plug-in home batteries. But can you actually use one that way in Ireland? Short answer: not the plug-in way. Not yet. As of the time of writing, we couldn't find an approved way in Ireland to plug a battery into an ordinary socket and have it power your house. A battery hardwired by a Registered Electrical Contractor is a different story, an

Another big name has joined the home battery race. Jackery, which also makes portable power stations, now has the SolarVault 3 range. It's well reviewed in Germany, but whether it's good value depends on where, and when, you look, and there's no Irish price yet. A home battery does a simple job. It stores electricity, from solar panels or from the grid on a cheap rate, and hands it back when you need it. Many of the newer ones are all-in-one boxes: battery, inverter (the bit

No solar panels. No sunshine required. A battery that might still help with the electricity bill. In a country where "sunny spells" counts as a good forecast, you'd have to admit that has a certain appeal. In Ireland we don't have as many sunny days as other countries, many of us are either renting our homes or live in apartments where we can't even think about put up solar panels. Across the water in the UK, there is a great excitement about plug-in Solar panels and power ge