A friend had a solar array and battery pack installed at his house. It is fully controlled by the power company. Even when the power is out due to storms, since connection is lost with the power company, the system can’t instruct the house to use the battery backup. What’s the point???
That sounds weird. We can see everything going on with (and have some control over) our batteries through an app, and the solar company that installed them has even more access through their master app. All that the power company does is keep track of how much power we’re generating. The batteries are “smart”, and can supposedly detect an outage immediately and provide seamless power (that is if it’s nighttime, as the solar panels work exclusively during daylight hours). These batteries were more costly than the panels themselves.