Solar & Battery Backup — Clean Energy, Reliable Power
Solar photovoltaic generation combined with battery energy storage provides on-site clean energy generation and backup power capability — reducing grid electricity costs during normal operations and maintaining critical loads during grid outages. Together, solar and battery storage address both energy cost and resilience objectives in a single integrated system.
What RLM Delivers on Solar & Battery Backup
Solar-plus-storage systems are increasingly cost-effective for commercial and industrial facilities — declining equipment costs, IRA tax incentives, and utility rate structures that reward peak demand reduction have transformed the economics. RLM advises on solar-plus-storage system design, equipment selection, and the operational integration that maximizes both energy cost savings and resilience value.
How We Approach Solar & Battery Backup
Our Solar & Battery Backup process, end to end: current state, market evaluation, commercial terms, and implementation support.
Solar + Storage Opportunity Assessment
We assess the solar generation potential and storage opportunity at your facilities — roof and ground area, solar resource, load profile, critical load identification, and the utility rate structure that shapes system design.
System Design Advisory
We advise on system design parameters — solar array sizing, battery capacity, inverter architecture, and the dispatch strategy that balances daily energy cost optimization against the reserve SOC (state of charge) maintained for outage backup.
Equipment Vendor Evaluation
We evaluate solar panel manufacturers, battery storage vendors (Tesla Powerpack, Fluence, Stem, LG Energy Solution), and inverter suppliers against your performance requirements, warranty terms, and the vendor financial stability that protects long-term equipment support.
Grid Interconnection & Permitting
We advise on utility interconnection requirements for solar-plus-storage, including export limitations, anti-islanding requirements, and the interconnection application process that governs how your system interacts with the grid.
Solar & Battery Backup Evaluation Criteria
Our Solar & Battery Backup process, end to end: current state, market evaluation, commercial terms, and implementation support.
Solar Sizing for Storage Charging
Solar array sizing relative to battery capacity affects both energy cost optimization and resilience. Oversized solar charges batteries faster but generates export that may be curtailed; undersized solar leaves battery capacity unused. Evaluate system sizing holistically.
Battery Chemistry Trade-offs
Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries offer better cycle life and safety; NMC batteries have higher energy density. Evaluate chemistry trade-offs against your use case — cycling frequency, temperature environment, and footprint constraints.
Grid Export Regulations
Some utilities restrict or prohibit grid export from customer-owned generation. Evaluate export restrictions before finalizing solar sizing — systems designed for net metering may require design modifications if export is restricted.
Resilience Duration
Battery backup duration depends on capacity and critical load size. Evaluate the critical loads requiring backup, the outage duration your organization needs to survive, and whether solar recharging during extended outages is feasible given generation capacity.
Operations & Maintenance
Solar panels degrade approximately 0.5% per year and require periodic cleaning and inspection. Battery systems require monitoring and eventual replacement. Evaluate O&M costs and the monitoring platform that tracks system health over the asset life.
"We needed smart metering and energy management across our campus portfolio. RLM mapped the vendor landscape, ran the evaluation, and we're now hitting our ESG targets ahead of schedule."
No upfront fees, no retainer, and no obligation to act on what we find.
Where This Matters Most
Sector-specific considerations we see repeatedly in iot engagements.
A Sample of the IoT Providers We Evaluate
RLM is vendor neutral. These are among 600+ providers in our evaluation set — inclusion here is not an endorsement, and we are paid by the provider you choose, not by any provider in particular. How that works →
Where Do You Want to Start With Solar & Battery Backup?
Talk to an RLM advisor who specializes in enterprise IoT deployments. Independent guidance from platform selection through operational deployment.