flooded v. sealed batteries [RE-wrenches]

Matt Tritt solarone at charter.net
Sat Sep 27 12:19:06 PDT 2003


Right. I usually inform my clients of their choices, including the hard
choices in storage cells,  right at the start. It's for sure that the guy
living in a small cabin on a small budget will choose what he can afford at
the time, and maybe grow into something better when there's money to do it,
but I usually tell them that the battery is the actual heart of the system.

I don't consider myself to be a "battery guy", but if you don't have good
batteries, it doesn't really matter how great the rest of the system is late
at night when you're trying to work on the computer and someone turns on a
hair dryer.

Matt T   Oh, there's just so much to spend money on!
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joel Davidson" <joeldavidson at earthlink.net>
To: <RE-wrenches at topica.com>
Sent: Saturday, September 27, 2003 11:48 AM
Subject: Re: flooded v. sealed batteries [RE-wrenches]


> >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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