The simple answer is no, solar panels do not work at night. Panels require sunlight in order to generate energy. The confusion regarding solar panels at night is simply a matter of the solar storage that stores your panels energy.
Your panels work throughout the day to generate the energy needed to power your home day and night. That means once the sun goes down your home depends on the excess energy your system produced during the sunlight hours.
Basically, once the sun goes down energy is accessed through home backup power in a solar battery. If your home does not have a solar battery paired with your system you can still access power. Energy is collected by tapping into your solar credits collected from net metering.
Solar Battery Storage Keeps the Night Bright
Solar batteries, as the name suggests, store the energy that your panels generate. This allows homeowners to access electricity when their panels aren’t generating any, like during the night or even when it’s cloudy. Energy from these batteries can be accessed any time of day, but come in handy especially when the sun sets.
These batteries store the excess energy that the panels generate that your home isn’t using. So instead of sending the excess energy to the grid, you can keep it to use on a rainy day, quite literally!
These batteries give you independence in how you use energy. Instead of having to draw energy from the grid, you can simply draw from your own battery. It’s like having your own grid to draw from!
