Solar Battery Selection & Protection
Solar Battery Selection & Protection
Solar power is stored in batteries to use when needed providing a continuing level of power for electrical loads. Battery storage also allows you to operate your appliances during night hours. Utilizing the Earth Care Peel and Stick Solar Panels energy can be collected on rainy days, cloudy days, in fact snow enhances the panel by supplying tremendous amounts of light reflecting through the snow.
Batteries are one of the most costly components to a solar system. Here we want you understand how to choose the right type batteries for your solar system. Batteries that can be used to store solar power in are sealed lead acid batteries, liquid vented lead acid batteries, gel cell batteries, alkaline batteries for low temperatures, nickel cadmium and nickel iron batteries.
Earth Care recommends the most popular of all of these are sealed lead acid deep cell batteries because they provide the best performance for the lowest cost, with the least maintenance required.
Since sealed lead acid batteries are the most commonly used for PV systems and designed to be compatible with common photovoltaic components, we will concentrate on sealed lead acid batteries here.
Determining the battery you are going to use in your solar system is very important . Throughout our illustrations we have utilized 12 volt batteries and 105 amp hours . A well known calculating formula can be used. Multiply the volts (V) x the amp hours (AH) and divide by 100.
Volts x Amp Hours / 100 = Watt Hours
12V x 105AH = 1260 / 100 = 12.6 Watt Hours
Example: You can power a 100 watt appliance for 12.6 hours on a fully charged battery.
The life expectancy for lead sealed batteries is determined by the following example:
if your battery is a 2500 cycle battery, this means it will be able to charged and discharged 2500 times before it has nothing left to give. Batteries must never be discharged lower than 50% or their life span will be much less.
An Earth Care Charge Controller is a vital component of any solar energy system that uses batteries. It controls the speed at which batteries are charged as well as protects them from overcharging and complete discharging.
A well known fact that overcharging your solar battery bank can produce dangerous hydrogen gases that are both harmful to breath and can ignite and explode if exposed to spark. The utilization of a programmed charge controller you can set it to eliminate the chance of overcharging or over-discharging your battery bank and never have to worry about this issue.
Sealed lead acid batteries should be kept in relatively consistent and moderate temperatures. A battery looses amp capacity when it is cold. Hot temperatures shortens the life span of a battery. It is very important to monitor the environment your sealed lead acid batteries are in all year round .
Vventilation will help batteries from overheating. Keep the battery system in a safe location in case they explode, and keep the batteries a secured distance from solar panels and other components essential to operate the system. Do not add new batteries with old batteries. Always keep a balanced system for your solar power.
Some people to choose not to use batteries in their solar system and connect directly to the AC panel of their building. In this case you will be using power directly from the solar system and when you have enough power, or not using power you can sell your produced energy to the power company. Earth recommends battery systems allowing you to have power at all times including in power outages, power shortages and most of all during a time of disasters.
