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
Storage chemistry, cycles and whether a battery pays for itself.
20 articles · page 1 of 2
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 separately limits how fast you may draw on what remains.
By Manish Trivedi · · 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
Batteries
Where the battery physically goes changes how long it lasts
Temperature governs the ageing rate of every cell, so the difference between a loft and an unheated garage…
· 4 min read
Batteries
Most solar systems go dead in a power cut, and that is deliberate
A grid-tied inverter is required to disconnect when the network fails, so keeping the lights on needs…
· 4 min read
Batteries
The percentage on the app is an estimate, and estimates drift
No battery has a fuel gauge, so the state of charge you are shown is calculated, and knowing how it is…
· 4 min read
Batteries
A car carries a far bigger battery, and it is usually somewhere else
Using a vehicle pack to power a house is technically real and practically constrained by availability…
· 4 min read
Batteries
Surplus can go to the cylinder or to the battery, and they are not equivalent
A hot water diverter and a battery compete for the same spare kilowatt, and each wins in a different…
· 4 min read
Batteries
A battery is sized by the evening, not by the array
The useful capacity is set by how much electricity the household draws between sunset and sunrise, and most…
· 4 min read