The economics rarely carry it
A home battery costs $10–18k installed for ~13 kWh usable. Under full net metering, it adds almost nothing: the grid was your battery. Its economics work in three places — poor export credits (store your own surplus), brutal time-of-use spreads (shift cheap midnight power to 6pm), and outage-prone grids where backup has real value.
The resilience case
If outages are frequent or medical equipment, well pumps, or home offices ride on power, the battery is a resilience product with arithmetic attached — price it like a generator alternative, not a solar accessory. Right-sizing (backing up loads, not the whole house) halves the cost and doubles the satisfaction.
The honest test
Run the payback calculator twice: system only, system + battery. If the delta payback extends past the battery's ~10-year warranty life, you are buying peace of mind — which is legitimate, just label it correctly. What corrupts decisions is buying resilience while telling yourself it was economics.