Solar Power

Traditionally, batteries are added in parallel to give the storage required. Look at the amp-hour rating of each battery and, for each one in parallel, add them up. Maximum energy storage is volts times amp-hours (the units will need addressing).

Yes Guest, if you run solar panels in parallel they must all be the same number of cells/panels in each string, otherwise you will be wasting energy as one larger panel tries to feed a smaller panel...

A bit like parrelleling battery cells I guess, the higher voltage cell will attempt to 'charge' up the lower voltage cells and therefore itself will never receive a full charge, usually this would mean its lifetime is drastically reduced, as when the battery if charging it will never receive a full charge and when discharging it will be the first one to reach a discharged state, with the other batteries continuing to discharge that cell will become reverse biased and will fail very quickly.

When CB radio was legalised in the UK in 1983(?) I saw quite a lot of portable CBs handed to me to repair with the only fault being the string of rechargeable NiCd cells having a couple of reverse biased and therefore dead cells in the string.

The problem being that most people don't realise that you must replace all the cells at once with the same type of cell and not just replace one or two cells as that makes the whole battery unbalanced and prone to an early failure.

John.

Look for a used forklift battery. When these batteries are reduced by age and use to a work/hour rating of about 75% of an 8 hr. day, it becomes cost effective for the forklift user to replace the battery. These batteries can usually be purchased for scrap value prices. The duty cycle of these very deep cycle is much greater than deep cycle marine batteries.

TMF

Excellent point. With the prices of batteries as they are you can get a single forklift battery with a 900 amp-hour rating @ I believe 24v. Brand new the price could scare you (around $4,000 & by the way 1000lbs), but when you find out how long the life of these batteries are, a used one could be a steal.

A wind turbine company out here in the Mohave desert boasts of an installation they did back in 1980 that is still running on the same forklift battery today. Obviously that was installed brand new, but considering it would require purchasing 16 6v 225 amp-hour batteries with a life expectancy of 5 to 7 years if you don't get those imbalances as others have pointed out, it is well worth looking into.

Yes, deep cycle lead acid. Must be matched to load requirements. Select solar panel to charge requirements weather cyclic or standby. You have asked a very open question, i hope this helps. Give me a shout if you need more details.

Dear Sir,

Normally any solar operated equipment is having with it a suitable storage battery equipment.

For example Solar Lantern, Solar Street light or say a solar water pump equipment.

Now the question is of what capacity one needs the storage battery cell ? And what exactly is the application after the adequate solar energy is tapped through PVC?

Here the meaning of PVC means Photo Voltaic Cell.

If the aforesaid application concepts are clear in one's mind , of course the suitability of battery cell is the subsequent issue to tackle.

Regards,

Ulhas Pradhan

Lead acid battery.

If you are not connected to utility power or Generating set or Wind Power, then Battery capacity should be such that it takes of Cloudy days. Generally such isolated places have 4 or 5 days storage capacity.

Some battery types if deeply discharged , do not come back to original capacity.

So better to have some extra storage capacity.

Tubular batteries ,like one in Forklift has the deep cucle capability . Or one has to go for specially made deep cycle batteries.