Virtual Battery - How to heat in winter with summer sun

If you’ve been on the fence about equipping your house with solar panels, doing so became even more enticing. A new service, created by E.ON in close cooperation with Creative Dock, offers custom‑tailored photovoltaics, individual loans, and a Virtual Battery, allowing you to consume one‑hundred percent of the energy you produce – a revolution on the Czech market.

For the launch, we invited Radomil Valeš, the Project Lead for Creative Dock, to introduce the new service in detail.

Radek, tell us about your Virtual Battery and what it brings to the market?

The Virtual Battery allows you to “store” energy and consume it at a later time. This way, we solve one of the major efficiency pitfalls photovoltaic users struggled with for decades: typically, solar panels yield the most power in summer, when it’s sunny. However, energy is most needed in the colder months of the year. Until now – despite having an overall production surplus – solar panel owners had to buy‑in additional energy in winter – a waste of resources and money. With the Virtual Battery, we guarantee users to actually consume all the energy they produce, even if it’s months between production and consumption.

So do I need to buy physical batteries with the solar panels?

You can, but don’t have to - that’s the beauty of the Virtual Battery. There’s no upfront investment, only a low monthly fee. How this works is simple: what you send to the grid, is later deducted from your overall consumption. How much this is in annual total, is the size of your Virtual Battery and based on that you pay the monthly fee. The rest you lend to E.ON, the creator or the Virtual Battery, and claim back whenever you need. In most cases, you are likely to borrow energy to E.ON during the day, and use it overnight. Think of the Virtual Battery as a savings account for your solar energy: you put aside what you don’t need at the moment, and use it whenever you do.

How much money can I actually save with a photovoltaic set‑up?

Here is a quickfire calculation from our website:

For a 3,575 kWp photovoltaic power plant and an initial investment of 163,760 CZK you can return everything within 8,5 years (without the Virtual Battery, it’ll be an extra year).

But of course, this always depends on your house type. As a rule of thumb, the larger the roof‑space available, the more electricity your panels will yield. Also, this depends on how much energy you actually consume. If you have a whirlpool, for instance, you’ll need more energy to heat it and save less.

And do you help with getting the right set‑up?

Yes, E.ON offers a holistic package, supporting you with all steps along the way‑from calculating your best‑possible solution to arranging all your paperwork and administrative duties. We even offer custom‑tailored payment plans to help you get the most out of your solar panels and start saving from the get‑go. Of course, we also install and test your hardware. You really don’t have to worry about anything.

So how do I get started?

Head over to our website https://www.eon‑solar.cz/ and start by entering your address. This way, you get an estimation on how much you can save with a photovoltaic set‑up. Then, if you want, you can go deeper by providing additional information to fine‑tune your savings‑profile. If you want us to get in touch with at any time, you can request us to call you. We’re happy to answer all your questions about the process.