Emit Solar | Home Solar Panels | Easy Ownership
Today, buying a battery does not make any financial sense for most households under the current tariff structure. But with Solar ATAP still new, the idea that every solar home “needs a battery” is getting traction.
The truth is more nuanced: A home battery can help you store energy and use it later. But in many cases, it may benefit the grid even more than it benefits you.
So the better question is:
Should every home buy its own battery, or should households subscribe to shared storage instead?
A watt store in your home is the same as a watt stored on the grid and can serve the same purpose: shifting solar energy from the day to when you need it.
That is the idea behind a Cloud Battery.
Like iCloud or Google Drive, you do not own the physical infrastructure. You pay to access the service and capacity you need.
The problem with home batteries
A home battery sounds logical. Your solar panels generate extra electricity during the day. The battery stores it, then powers your home after sunset.
But it comes with real limitations:
- high upfront cost
- capacity dedicated to one household
- ongoing degradation and eventual replacement
- maintenance and warranty risk
- many households may not be able to afford one
A home battery may still make sense if you want backup power or greater energy independence. But if the main goal is saving money, it is worth asking whether every home needs to own its own hardware.
Cloud computing asked the same question about servers.
What Cloud computing taught us
Before Cloud computing, every company bought and maintained its own servers. Much of that capacity sat unused, but businesses still paid for the hardware, space, cooling, maintenance and upgrades.
Cloud computing pooled those resources into shared infrastructure. Users paid for access rather than ownership. A small business could use the same type of computing infrastructure as a large corporation without making a huge upfront investment.
A Cloud Battery applies the same idea to energy storage:
Today – Own servers
Home battery
- You buy the hardware
- It serves one property
- You carry the maintenance and replacement risk
- Capacity may sit unused
Tomorrow – Cloud model
Cloud battery
- You subscribe to storage capacity
- Physical batteries are shared
- The operator maintains and replaces the equipment
- Capacity can serve many users and grid needs
The same logic that made cloud computing transformative applies directly to energy storage. The technology is different. The structural insight is identical.
How a cloud battery would work
Malaysia does not need to abandon bill savings. It needs additional models that allow more rooftops to participate.
Your solar panels generate excess solar
Your panels may produce more power than your home needs. That excess is exported to the grid and recorded.
You receive storage credits
Instead of selling it cheaply back to the grid, that surplus is credited to your Cloud Battery account – your virtual allocation.
Shared batteries store energy across the system
Physical batteries – large-scale, industrial-grade – are installed at grid substations and feeder points. Your virtual energy sits within this shared pool.
You draw it back when you need it
In the evening when solar drops off and electricity demand peaks, you draw from your Cloud Battery account. Your savings are real – the battery just isn’t in your home.
The economics must be 17.4sen/kWh
A Cloud Battery is only useful if it improves your financial position. Under Solar ATAP, domestic exports are credited against the Energy Charge.
For a household below 1,500 kWh per month:
- Energy Charge: 03sen/kWh
- Capacity Charge: 55sen/kWh
- Network Charge: 85sen/kWh
- Total: 43sen/kWh
You receive about 27.03sen when exporting one kWh, but may later pay 44.43sen to import one kWh.
The difference is:
17.4sen/kWh
The same gap applies to the higher Energy Charge tier:
54.43sen − 37.03sen = 17.4sen/kWh
In effect, Solar ATAP already behaves somewhat like a virtual battery. You export during the day and buy energy back later, with the difference acting like a storage cost.
So the commercial test for a Cloud Battery is simple:
Can it store and return usable energy for less than the value you currently lose between export and later import?
If the full Cloud Battery cost is higher than 17.4sen/kWh, it may not improve savings. If it is lower, the model becomes financially interesting.
Why shared storage could be better
Scale does not automatically make storage cheap. But it creates several advantages that an individual home battery does not have.
Bulk purchasing
Large projects can negotiate better equipment, financing and service terms.
Shared capacity
Not every customer needs their maximum storage allocation at the same time. Pooling demand can reduce the amount of hardware required per subscriber.
Better placement
Batteries can be installed where they provide the most value to the grid, rather than wherever an individual customer happens to live.
Professional operation
One operator manages performance, maintenance, replacement and software optimisation.
Multiple revenue streams
This may be the biggest advantage. A shared battery could earn revenue from more than household subscriptions. It could also provide:
- peak-demand reduction
- frequency regulation
- grid balancing
- congestion relief
- renewable-energy firming
- other grid-support services
A home battery serves one household. A shared battery can potentially serve customers and the grid at the same time. That additional revenue could help lower the subscription price.
The grid benefits too
Individual batteries are not necessarily bad for the grid. When coordinated through a Virtual Power Plant, home batteries can support grid stability and reduce peak demand. But thousands of separately owned batteries are harder to optimise unless they are connected and managed together.
Shared storage gives system operators more visibility over:
- where capacity is located
- when it charges
- when it discharges
- which grid constraints it should support
Malaysia is already moving toward large-scale battery storage. The Energy Commission’s MyBeST programme covers 400MW / 1,600MWh of Battery Energy Storage System capacity for Peninsular Malaysia.
The infrastructure direction is already taking shape.
The next question is whether households can access some of that storage value through a consumer service.
A win for the home. A win for the grid. A win for Malaysia.
Solar homeowners
Zero capex. No RM15k purchase.
A monthly subscription achieves the same time-shift savings – and it becomes accessible to middle-income solar owners, not just the affluent.
The national grid
Batteries placed where the grid actually needs them – not wherever a wealthy homeowner happens to live. Centrally managed discharge prevents the instability risks of uncoordinated decentralised storage.
The Ringgit
One national procurement – rather than tens of thousands of individual purchases – means better terms, potential local assembly, local service contracts, and capital that circulates domestically rather than flowing overseas.
The Equity Case
A subscription model changes the entry point. People pay for the service they need instead of buying the entire asset.That is how cloud computing made advanced infrastructure widely accessible. Energy storage could follow the same path.
The Bottom Line
Home batteries do not make financial sense for most households today. But a shared battery system that every solar homeowner can access could. The concept is simple:
- export excess solar
- receive storage credits
- draw them down later
- pay for the service instead of owning the hardware
The model works only if shared infrastructure, better utilisation and additional grid-service revenue make it cheaper than today’s alternative.
The benchmark is clear:
Can Cloud Battery storage beat the current 17.4sen/kWh gap?
If it can, Malaysia could make energy storage more affordable, more accessible and more useful to the grid by giving every home access to one.
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