19 August

Lithium batteries have almost replaced AGM deep cell lead acid and calcium in the small scale battery market
Historically solar deep cycle batteries could be happily discharged to 50%. Managed by battery controllers (BMS) which enabled voltage readings and battery equalisation of the voltage across the cells. This enabled the power bank to provide a balanced power draw across all the cells

Although Li batteries have advanced Canbus BMS’s and we now have the capacity to read and manage the battery State of Charge (SOC) on our phones the batteries are no different, they still require equalisation of the cells to perform optimally. This requires a full state of charge

Solar hybrid systems are expensive and their owners wish to use them for two man functions in South Africa
The first is Solar power battery cycling. That is to charges the batteries from the sun during the day while discharging them at night. This is a key factor in ensuring you get an ROI out of your system
The second is load shedding battery backup. This requires setting an SOC that provides for Load-shedding regardless of the weather. But as winter draws on with less PV power to charge the batteries and long battery draws from LS. The batteries never get to equalise and they often fall unexpectedly.

Solution set the SOC higher in winter months to 60% and ensure your batteries get a forced charge to 100% a few times a month to ensure they perform optimally so they are always ready when you need them. If your mind is only set on your systems ROI your Load-sheading protection will fail