best battery to use for a backup house system?
John M asked:
i have built a makeshift backup lighting system for my house and would like to know what the best battery would be. i also plan to expand this system to power more equipment, maybe even the whole house. i am currently using 3 car batteries.also, where can i get good solar panels and a battery charger for them for a reasonable price?
i live in Pennsylvania and i am just in search of stuff for a backup system for 24-48 hours of runtime
jivepacketrat, i had the same idea, i had some old useless batteries that wouldn’t work right so i strung them together and a week later they were working fine.
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i have built a makeshift backup lighting system for my house and would like to know what the best battery would be. i also plan to expand this system to power more equipment, maybe even the whole house. i am currently using 3 car batteries.also, where can i get good solar panels and a battery charger for them for a reasonable price?
i live in Pennsylvania and i am just in search of stuff for a backup system for 24-48 hours of runtime
jivepacketrat, i had the same idea, i had some old useless batteries that wouldn’t work right so i strung them together and a week later they were working fine.
February 19th, 2009 at 2:34 am
Why not just get a whole house generator. They run around $100 per 1000 watts. 10000 watts wil run all of your basic appliances. That willelevate the batteries and their maintenance.
February 22nd, 2009 at 1:12 pm
I use Rolls Surrette batteries - they are the very best available. The solar panels and charger system you use will depend on the voltage of your system (mine is 24-volt).
February 25th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
You’re delving into a realm of expensive equipment. I have an off-grid house, and it uses $4000 worth of Trojan L-16 Batteries (considered the best around here), and a $2000 inverter (Xantrex brand). I don’t have any solar panels (I use a waterwheel instead), but figure about $10,000 per 1000 watts peak capacity for those. One of the best sources of information is Home Power magazine; they have a online presence, too.
EDIT: I don’t think a “backup” system, that’s capable of powering a house for 24-48 hours would be much different than a complete off-grid power system. Even people with off-grid systems need to run their backup generators if the sun doesn’t shine for a few days, just as an example. I think this is more a matter of how big (the amp-hour capacity) your battery bank really is.
February 26th, 2009 at 8:58 am
Too much to post.
Here are two good battery sites;
Any group of batteries you use mush be ‘normalized to work together.
Look it up.
February 27th, 2009 at 4:52 am
I hope that your device to change from the commercial grid to your back up system is a break before make switch. That means that the common connection to the house breaks the connection to commercial or back up before it connects to the other. Otherwise you will have serious problems. Also remember that you require at least 10 times the current from the 12 volt batteries to provide the current required by your lights etc. So you will need a very large string of 12 batteries in parallel to run the house.
You might try contacting car dealerships that have replaced car batteries in new cars because the owner left the battery go dead and did not want to wait until the dealership could deep charge them. These batteries have a lot of life in them, but cannot be sold as new, so they might work out a deal with you. The recommendation that I had was to use marine deep charge batteries as they provide more current for a longer time. They of course are the most expensive batteries. You may find that a generator is less expensive in the long run.