Batteries
Nameplate capacity and usable capacity are two different numbers
A home battery advertises the energy its cells contain, withholds a reserve you will never touch, and…
· 4 min read
Power Your Roof — Household energy, with the numbers
Why the optimum tilt for an array is flatter than people expect
The old rule of setting tilt equal to latitude optimises for one moment in the year, and annual energy prefers something shallower.
By Daniel Okonkwo · · 4 min read
In focus: Batteries
All of Batteries →Storage chemistry, cycles and whether a battery pays for itself.
Batteries
Depth of discharge is a dial rather than a setting
How deeply a battery is emptied trades usable energy per cycle against how many cycles it will deliver, and…
· 4 min read
Batteries
Round-trip efficiency quietly taxes every unit you store
Energy put into a battery and taken out again arrives smaller than it left, and that shortfall sets the…
· 4 min read
Batteries
A battery pays back through the tariff, not through the hardware
The value of a stored unit is the difference between what it would have earned leaving the house and what…
· 4 min read
Batteries
What a cycle counts, and why warranties measure it two ways
A warranty may be expressed in years, in cycles or in total energy delivered, and which of those three…
· 4 min read
Batteries
Chemistry decides how a battery fails long before it decides capacity
The word lithium covers several quite different chemistries, and the one that suits a car is not…
· 4 min read
Elsewhere
Everything →
Solar Basics
A shadow on one corner costs far more than one corner
Cells wired in series must all carry the same current, so the darkest cell sets the limit for everything…
· 4 min read
Solar Basics
What standard test conditions measure, and why a roof never provides them
A panel’s rated wattage is its output at one irradiance, one cell temperature and one atmospheric path, and…
· 4 min read
Solar Basics
Panels degrade, and the first year does not resemble the rest
Output falls along two separate curves — a small initial drop in the first weeks of exposure, then a slow…
· 4 min read
Solar Basics
Optimisers and microinverters fix different halves of the same problem
Both put electronics under every panel and both are sold as a shading remedy, but they split the work…
· 4 min read
Batteries
Nameplate capacity and usable capacity are two different numbers
A home battery advertises the energy its cells contain, withholds a reserve you will never touch, and…
· 4 min read
Batteries
Depth of discharge is a dial rather than a setting
How deeply a battery is emptied trades usable energy per cycle against how many cycles it will deliver, and…
· 4 min read
Also worth reading
Round-trip efficiency quietly taxes every unit you store
A battery pays back through the tariff, not through the hardware
What a cycle counts, and why warranties measure it two ways
Import and export are priced separately, and that changes everything
Time-of-use pricing rewards moving a load rather than shrinking it
An east and west array can beat a south-facing one on the bill
Standing charges mean cutting usage does not cut the bill proportionally