Home Solar Power

Battery Features and Benefits

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24 Brand new high quality AA 1000mAh Size high capacity rechargebale NiCd batteries
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Ideal for for applications such as scanners, cameras, solar lattern, emergency lights, portable devices, control (RC) toys, and backups.
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High capacity and long run time.
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Very long cycle life and Rapid battery charge up
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Significant savings (70% or more) from any retail stores.
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Battery tested based on International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standard to ensure capacity, quality and life time
# Excellent quality and best price
# Dimension: 14.2 Dia x 50 H mm.
# Weight: 0.06 lbs per cell

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Electricity 1000mAh, Batteries, Light, Malibu, Nicd, Power, Solar, Tenergy

This video discuses wiring solar panels for different voltages and currents. This is a simple explanation of “Series” and “Parallel” configurations for solar panels and DC batteries.

Electricity, Solar Power Batteries, Home Solar Power, Inverters, Portable Solar Power

I supposed if we have to have parking meters they may as well be home solar powered. I remember when they were clockwork, the user would wind them up as they inserted a coin, but in recent years they have all switched to digital and use a 9v battery. Binghamton University in upstate New York have now installed home solar powered meters.

Binghamton University is one of eleven colleges in the USA to be listed in The Princeton Review’s first ever “green rating” of colleges.

Portable Solar Power Batteries, Parking Meters, Portable Solar Power

I’ve mostly talked about home solar power installations for the home up to now.  There’s another area to consider and that is portable home solar power.  Getting cheap electricity at home is easy.  The utility company delivers it to the door, as much as you want instantly as long as you pay the bill.  But what if you are back country camping or miles from land in a sailboat?

Luckily solar panel manufacturers have not been idle in this respect and there is a wide range of ready to use products to charge your cell phone or your GPS.  There are even backpacks with built in solar panels.  12 volt panels are available for your boat or RV.  Connect two clips to your battery, stick the panel in sunlight and you get free electricity.

Here are a few of the more popular products:

A 5W charger to maintain your car, RV or marine battery for less that $40 at the time of writing from Amazon

A backpack complete with solar panel and battery storage for camping trips.  Currently a little over $200 at Amazon

A home solar powered laptop charger prices at an impressive $350.  Ouch.  I wonder if the backpack charger would work with laptops?  Let me know if you find out.

These are obviously just a sample of the many products available.  Prices are still a bit too high for the truly portable solutions but they are becoming more affordable each month and manufacturers scale up the production of solar cells.

Electricity, Portable Solar Power Batteries, Portable Solar Power

What would you say if I told you that you were effectively paying over $300 per KWh for your electricity?

Electricity is billed by all utility companies by the kilowatt-hour (kWh). If a single electric heater consumes 1 kilowatt ( 1000 watts) and the heater is left on for one hour then one kWh is used. Using a 60 watt light bulb for one hour consumes 0.06 kilowatt hours of electricity. Using a single 60 watt light bulb for one hundred hours consumes 6 kWh of electricity.

The average price of Electricity in the USA according to government statistics is 11.94 cents per KWh.

You may well be paying over $300 per KWh if you use disposable batteries in your flashlight, radio or camera.

The cost of a single AA batery is $1.47 at Walmart if purchased in a pack of 4. The average capacity of an alkaline battery is around 2900 mAh with a voltage of 1.5.

Since it’s a convention to measure energy in Joules, I’m going to convert the theoretical energy available in both cases. The battery, discharging to 0.8v a cells gives us 15390 Joules, or 15.39 KJoules of energy. Since 1 W/s is 1 Joule of energy, 1 kW hour = 60 x 60 = 3600 kJoules.

A single KWh of electricity therefore gives us 234 times the theoretical energy of a single AA battery. The actual energy obtained from the battery will be lower in practice since most devices stop working once the battery voltage drops to a pre-defined level, but I’m going to err on the side of caution in this analysis. Your battery power is therefore costing you $343 per KWh equivalent ($1.47 x 3600/15.39).

Luckily there is a solution to reduce these costs somewhat.

Rechargable batteries are widely available with around the same capacity of the disposable alkaline AA battery but these can be recharged up to 1,000 times. The average cost of four rechargeable batteries is $11. Even assuming they are only recharged 250 times, this brings the per usage cost down to a single penny. It’s true that you will need to use your relatively cheap mains electricity to recharge the batteries but, since this blog is about home solar power, there’s an even better solution. Amazon, and I’m sure many other stores, have a Home Solar Powered Battery Charger for less that $20:

So ditch those expensive polluting disposable batteries and go buy some rechargables.

Electricity Batteries, Electricity, Home Solar Power