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| Acceptable Design Practices cont. |
- Keep Batteries Warm; Batteries perform best at 70 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. You will get the
maximum amp hour capacity out of your batteries if they are operated at room temperature or slightly higher. Since batteries have
a natural self-discharge rate, the rate of discharge can be reduced by storing unused, charged batteries in a cool environment at
about 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Size Battery Banks for Several Days Operation; Once you have calculated your daily power
consumption, size your battery bank to give you several days of operation and pretend that there will be no charging source available
during that time. Here at Sunelco, we would typically use 10 days of autonomy as our design figure. This would roughly calculate
to 10% discharge per day with the plan being that the battery bank would be fully recharged by the renewable energy system the
following day. In extremely sunny or windy locations we can reduce the size of the battery bank by as much as 20% to 30% because
there is less fluctuation in the day to day re-charge cycle. However, if the 10 day rule is followed and the batteries are discharged
10% daily we can expect longer life out of the battery bank than if we are discharging the battery 20% or more.
- Avoid Long, Low Voltage, DC Wire Runs; The lower the voltage of the circuit and the more amperage
we need to carry over a circuit the larger the wire needs to be. For this reason, we need to keep the battery charging source as
close as possible to the battery bank. For more information on this aspect go to Basics of Electricity and Wire Loss Chart
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