Battery Storage and Grid Services

Your battery could be doing more than saving money. If you have solar panels and a home battery, you’re already generating and storing your own energy. For most homeowners, that means lower electricity bills and greater control over how energy is used at home.

What’s less widely understood is that your system could do more than just reduce costs. In the right conditions, it can also generate income.

This is where grid services come in.

How the UK Powers Millions of Homes

The UK electricity system, operated by National Grid ESO, must constantly balance supply and demand. In the past, this was largely managed by adjusting output from large power stations. As higher consumption household appliances like EV chargers, and heat pumps come online, and intermittent energy sources like wind and solar supply the UK grid increasingly more, that job has become progressively more complex. Supply is now more variable, and demand continues to fluctuate throughout the day.

To manage this, the grid increasingly relies on flexibility. Rather than only turning power stations up or down, it can now call on smaller, distributed energy systems to help maintain balance. This includes home batteries.

Balancing the UK Grid via Grid Services

Grid services are programmes that reward this kind of flexibility. In simple terms, they pay households and businesses to use, store or export electricity in a way that supports the wider system.

A home battery is particularly well-suited to this role. It can store energy when it is plentiful or inexpensive, reduce reliance on the grid during peak periods, and export electricity back when demand is high. When thousands of homes do this in coordination, they effectively operate as a single, responsive energy resource, often described as a virtual power plant.

There are several ways this translates into financial benefit. Some programmes reward households for reducing electricity use during peak periods, particularly during winter evenings when demand is highest. Others offer payments for being available to provide energy if needed, even if that energy is not always called upon. There are also opportunities to export electricity at more valuable times, rather than simply exporting excess energy whenever it is available.

How to Earn More With Your Solar & Battery System

Many homeowners are already familiar with exporting energy through the Smart Export Guarantee. This provides payment for electricity sent back to the grid. Grid services build on this idea by introducing the concept of timing. Instead of being paid purely for how much energy is exported, households can benefit from exporting when that energy is most valuable to the system.

In 2024 homeowners whose energy suppliers did not offer access to wholesale markets were given the ability to appoint an independent aggregator to control behind-the-meter appliances, such as a battery or an EV and trade energy to make a profit.

For those with battery storage, this represents an opportunity to increase the overall return on their investment. Rather than using a battery solely for bill savings or backup, it becomes part of a wider energy system that can actively generate value.

What does this look like in practice?

To make this more tangible, consider a typical home with solar panels and a 10-15kWh battery system.

Under normal operation, the battery stores excess solar energy during the day and powers the home in the evening, reducing electricity bills.

When participating in grid services, that same system can also respond to signals from the wider electricity network. For example, during periods of high demand on the grid, the battery may be discharged to supply energy back to the system or reduce reliance on imported electricity.

In return for providing this flexibility, the household can receive additional payments on top of the savings already achieved through self-consumption and export tariffs such as the SEG.

The exact value depends on several factors, including the size of the battery, how often the grid requires support, and the specific programme being accessed.

The grid pays for several services your battery can provide including wholesale market trading. This gives homeowners the opportunity to trade power in the wholesale market, capitalising on price differentials to maximise revenue.

Savings vs Earnings

While motivations for purchasing a battery storage system initially may have been to save money by increasing consumption of cost-effective energy, grid services present a unique opportunity to unlock larger earnings by participating in energy trading.

A home battery earns money by charging your battery while prices are low and sells that energy, when called upon, to the grid when prices rise again.

This does mean that less expensive energy won’t be available to use as you would have sent it back to the grid, but the money you will make from selling that energy to the grid will offset that cost and earn you more profit overall.

Some households with larger or more actively optimised systems may earn more during periods of high grid stress, particularly in winter months when demand is highest. The Demand Flexibility Service alone has historically delivered payments of several pounds per kilowatt-hour during peak events.

From a user perspective, the process is designed to be largely automated. Once the system is connected through an approved platform or aggregator, decisions about when to charge or discharge the battery are handled in the background. In most cases, the homeowner does not need to manually intervene.

The key change is that the battery moves from being a passive storage device to an active participant in the energy system.

Access to these types of programmes is expanding as the energy system evolves. New models are making it easier for homeowners to participate without needing to manage the complexity themselves.

If you are interested in hearing further news about any future grid services opportunities with Duracell Energy products, please submit the following form and we’ll be in touch when any news regarding grid services.