Why Just Adding Batteries Won’t Solve Your Interconnection Problems 

When a solar project gets denied interconnection approval due to grid constraints, the natural impulse is to find a workaround. Can’t export to the grid? Can’t you just add batteries and keep everything on-site? If you’re not sending power back to the utility, why should they care?

This “solution” reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how grid saturation works. Taking your load off a congested circuit can actually make the problem worse for everyone else. In this clip, HeatSpring instructor Vaughan Woodruff explains why adding energy storage still creates grid impact, and why we’re moving into an era where some projects simply can’t be built, no matter how clever the workaround.

Want to better understand grid hosting capacity and how to navigate interconnection challenges? Vaughan Woodruff’s Solar & Storage Interconnection Survival Guide breaks down the technical knowledge, regulations, and strategies you need to turn interconnection from a roadblock into a competitive advantage – helping you identify viable projects faster, avoid costly delays, and close deals your competitors can’t.

Transcript below.

I think a lot of customers and companies are like, “Well, if I can’t export this to the system, maybe I can throw in some batteries and not export and store that energy and use it at other times.”

When I first got into talking about interconnection, it seemed to come from this libertarian bent, like “I should be able to make my own energy and store it. And who is the utility to say yes or no?”

Well, they’re not just serving me. They’re serving the entirety of their service base. And if there’s a lot of solar on a circuit, so much so that it’s causing customers not to be able to interconnect to that circuit. If you take your load off that circuit, you’re now having the same amount of solar serving less load, which exacerbates the issue.

So even going to a non-exporting arrangement has grid impact.

I think we’re still in that interim a little bit, depending upon what state folks are in and how mature the market is. But yeah, we’re definitely getting to the place where there are projects that want to get interconnected and won’t.

And you know, a lot of what happens too, especially for small projects, is – if a project costs $20,000 to $30,000 to put in, how much time is someone going to expend on the regulatory process that could cost magnitudes larger than that to get the project approved?