flooded v. sealed batteries [RE-wrenches]

Joel Davidson joeldavidson at earthlink.net
Sat Sep 27 11:48:13 PDT 2003


>From Tom Hund's 1996  Sandia battery study - "battery costs can easily
exceed $0.26 to $1.30 per
kWh over the life of the system. This simple calculation indicates that
battery costs can be equal to or greater
than the life-cycle costs of the PV modules (assuming PV life-cycle costs of
$0.25 per kWh or ~$6/Wp)."

Most PV-biased people (including me) subordinate battery cost when budgeting
for an off-grid PV system. On the other hand, a battery guy will build an
off-grid power system around the battery bank and getset/charger and then
add PV if there is any money left.

Matt Tritt wrote:

> Hi Jay,
>
> I don't have to do a lot of convincing after laying-out the costs
> involved in replacing a nice big bank of L-16's. It's not just the
> batteries, it's the labor, the transportation, the cables, the disposal,
> the problems that always occur in the time leading-up to the battery
> removal and exchange, the irritation of the client when they finally
> realize they have to pay for another bank after only 6 to 7 years, (10
> years is the very absolute maximum for an L-16 in my experience), in
> some cases only 2 to 3 years under severe duty cycle. It's also the
> improved efficiency when using 12 volt cases since the individual cells
> are connected without cable ends.
>
> If you get out that calculator again and factor-in all the peripheral
> costs I bet you come up with numbers that make more sense. ;-)

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