
Originally Posted by
Justloadit
Even if you have more panels, Lead acid batteries have a maximum amount of charge amps, so the daily 6 hours of sunlight will not be sufficient. Also fully discharging lead acid batteries on a daily base will severely compromise battery lifespan. If you daily discharge down to 10.5V, you will only get about 30 to 40 cycles before the battery starts to loose capacity.
This is the reason that when using lead acid, that you double the capacity you require, in order to give a reasonable lifespan of 200 odd cycles before capacity starts to reduce. A safe figure is to reduce capacity down to 70% of capacity to get a few years of use out the battery. The problem that now arises is that you have to match the charger accordingly, and every couple of months you need to cycle your battery to de-sulfide the plates.
When you do the calcs, it is wise to rather go to lithium batteries from the start. It will be cheaper on the long run. Lithium can be regularly discharged to about 20% of capacity without compromising capacity. The other advantage is that you can charge lithium's under the right conditions in 2 hours. Very amicable to solar based system chargers.
Did you like this article? Share it with your favourite social network.