You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: Off-grid: How to Calculate the Battery Bank Size for Your Off-grid System or Emergency Power Needs
There's some good advice in that article. It's very important to know your use before starting a system, not just the constant, daily use but include sudden, peak loads for both emergencies and if you want to use a high draw device such as a drill
For sure. For power tools we use trickle charged 20v batteries to help lighten the load on the system. Lead acid batteries do well at peak loads. It's also best if you are able to do those tasks and full sun. Inverter wattage would also be important for handling the load - I'll be discussing inverter and other pars of the system in upcoming posts :)
Thats good info.At the moment we're running everyhing at 240V through a cheap ebay inverter
Do you need to do anything to convert the 20V from the batteries to that used by the powertools?
Standard cordless power tools that have a compatible 20v battery pack so i can use the 20v battery packs with any of the tools, they use straight 20v from the battery pack i presume .. have a drill, circular saw, lawn trimmer, bike and car tire filler compressor, multiple flash/flood lights, and a chainsaw that all use these 20v battery packs that i trickle charge off the panels when the sun's out.
Thats the best option ive come up with too, charge the tools batteries via the solar. At the moment im charging them via their 240V charger via the inverter, but am planning to put in a dedicated 18V DC circuit so I can charge directly from the solar batteries.
Oh, yeah for the charging the 20v batteries i still go through the inverter too. I havent approached charging them from 12v to 20v yet.
Now that i think of it, it wouldnt take much more amperage than a laptop, so one of those 12v-20v Converters should work, but i haven't tried it out yet with the 20v batteries... https://steemit.com/off-grid/@jackdub/tech-talk-get-more-power-out-of-your-off-grid-system-with-single-voltage-conversion