What Batteries To Use With A Solar Power System
This article will talk about various kinds of batteries that can be used with solar power and which type is the best to use. If you are planning to install a solar power system and you want to use electricity when the sun isn’t shining, you’ll require a way to store the power generated when the sun is shining. Batteries and a solar charge controller are the typical way to accomplish this. But, what is the best type of battery to use?
The recent battery technologies that are used in things like laptops, ipods and hybrid cars might be your first thought. There are reasons these batteries are a good fit for those devices, but as you’ll see they don’t apply to solar power systems.
Size and weight is the biggest advantage these types of batteries have. The biggest drawback to these batteries is price versus the older batteries. These newer types of batteries make devices like cell phones more expensive, but they allow the devices to me much smaller and lighter and in these applications size and weight are more important than cost.
Your solar power installation, though, is going to stay in one place. On the other hand, you are going to want as much capacity as you can afford. So, much more important than size or weight will be cost per watt/hour of capacity.
When it comes to best cost for capacity, the king of battery technology is plain old sealed lead acid batteries. The battery in your car is sealed lead acid. Sealed lead acid batteries will be 50-25% the cost of the newer battery types for similar capacity. Sealed lead acid batteries are rugged, cheap and safe.
In most solar power systems you will find 12v sealed lead acid batteries. The vast majority of solar installations use some multiple of 12 volts like 12, 24 or 48. By wiring together 12 volt batteries in series, you can obtain any of these voltages. You can then begin to increase the number of appliances you can supply electricity to and also increase the amount of energy you can store by combining the groups of batteries in parallel.
To charge the batteries you will also require a 12 volt solar charger. The charge controller lowers the amount of power applied to the batteries as they get more charged to prevent overcharging.
In order to power appliances you normally plug into the wall with batteries (or solar panels) you will need a power inverter. You’ll need a grid tie inverter if you plan to sell excess electricity back to the power company. A regular power inverter will power all your appliances and be less expensive if you don’t need to tie into the grid.
That’s pretty much it. While the newer, high efficiency technology is best for solar panels, old fashioned technology is best when it comes to batteries for a home solar power system. For home solar systems, sealed lead acid batteries are what you should use.
