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Non-Tech : Alternative energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stan who wrote (1179)	10/14/2004 10:32:42 AM
From: Stephen O	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 16955

Stan Is that true during daylight hours? I can see the need for batteries at night.

To: Stan who wrote (1179)	10/14/2004 9:31:19 PM
From: Zeuspaul	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16955

How often does your power go down? And how important is it that you maintain power all the time? It is a lot cheaper to live without electricity for a few hours each year vs trying to improve on the reliability of the grid. A small battery bank may function as a UPS for your power system saving a few digital clock resets. If you want to protect against hours or days of power outage the cost goes up dramatically. I can't see using batteries in either case unless you have out of the ordinary electricity needs. Traditionally batteries in a solar system are used when the sun goes down or the clouds come in. To design a solar system with batteries in lieu of a grid storage system requires a battery bank that will last for days of low or no solar. Any thought of a battery bank is a carry over from previous systems that required batteries as net metering was not an option. Now we can sell the juice back to the grid...generally at full retail...so the grid becomes a cheap battery...no effficiency loss as in a battery system. So don't buy a battery system to store the juice when the sun goes down as the grid storage (net metering) is a better option. And unless you have super ordinary electrical needs...absolutely can't go without electriceity for a few hours each year...don't opt for batteries for grid failures either. So unless you have a really good reason for batteries...skip them and spend the extra bucks on more solar cells. Zeuspaul