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Useful Tips for Choosing the Right Solar Battery

Everyone knows the benefits of installing solar panels on our homes, but what about at night when the sun has stopped shining, but our electricity usage goes on. A solar battery is an energy storage device that uses the power of a battery to store solar energy directly. It is also known as a photovoltaic (PV) battery. The solar battery can help reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and it is gaining interest because of the need to develop renewable energy sources. While you may know what to look for in a solar panel array, what things do you need to think about when in the market for a solar battery system?

How Much Power Do You Use?

To truly understand the type of battery you will use, you must consider your power usage once the sunsets. For example, if you live in a hot climate and use an air conditioner all night, you will need a very high-capacity battery. The converse is also true for colder weather and space heaters. When your batteries aren’t large enough, they’ll quickly deplete before sunrise because both are energy-hungry.

Depth Of Discharge (DoD)

Due to their chemical composition, these types of batteries must maintain a certain amount of charge to avoid a significant reduction in their lifespan. Most manufacturers will note the DoD of their batteries, and you should follow this advice. Once you understand the DoD percentage and how much energy you will use, you can plan what capacity battery you will need. For example, if your battery has a DoD of 90% and you have a 10 kWh battery, it means that you can use 9 kWh before having to recharge it.

Efficiency

An essential factor to look out for is the efficiency or the round trip efficiency of your battery. Essentially, when you store daylight power this is the amount of usable energy that you will get from a given kWh. When shopping around, you will need to ensure that you get a good round trip efficiency number, as this will determine how economical your purchase will be. For instance, if you are feeding in 5 kWh of energy and getting out 4 kWh, it means the efficiency is 80%. The higher the percentage, the better.

Lifespan and Warranty

By their very nature, batteries will lose effectiveness over time, and there will come the point where you will need to replace them. This is inevitable due to the constant charge and drain cycles that they go through. What should not be inevitable is an early death and the expense that comes with the replacement. This is why you should check for a good warranty when searching for these products. The company will provide you with data on your battery’s cycle life, with one cycle being one charge and one drain.

The warranty you receive will let you know the number of cycles over a certain amount of time. For example, it could be 5000 cycles meaning that the warranty will only cover it for this cycle. So if you use one cycle per day, it should last you for over 13 years. On the other hand, there could be a time limit and what capacity remains after that time. Whatever the particular offer, you should ensure that the warranty offered is good enough to cover your use case.

Choose The Manufacturer Wisely

This type of technology is incredibly sophisticated, and there are not many companies that can develop it for frequent use. By ensuring that you have chosen a well-known manufacturer, you will save more money in the long term. It may seem like you are saving money when you opt for a lesser-known brand, but frequent replacement and labor can end up costing more. Some of the better manufacturers include:

– Tesla Powerwall
– LG Chem
– Duracell
– Sunrun
– SunLux

Which Chemicals Are Used?

There are a few options of battery chemicals used to create these products. You will most likely encounter Lithium-Ion varieties, but there are others. The most common are:

Lead-acid: They are tried and tested and are often cheaper than the alternatives. Nevertheless, they offer less in terms of lifespan and DoD.

Lithium-Ion: They are lighter, safer, and keep their power for longer than lead-acid varieties, but they are considerably more expensive.

Saltwater:This is a new technology that doesn’t use toxic metals. However, it is experimental and not widely used.

Summary

Solar batteries are a fantastic method to store the sun’s energy that hits your solar panel to keep it for later usage. In many ways, if you set up your systems correctly, you could save vast amounts of money on your utility bills, getting a return on the investment in no time at all.

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