Dominican Lifestyle

If there is one item that down here is more jealous and demanding than a prom queen it is batteries. First off they are extremely desired in any condition as scrap metal. They need constantly monitored for water. If one battery in you bank goes bad it messes up your entire bank. They have a limited shelf life and they cost.

 On the other hand they keep the lights on. You can expect to pay a $100 Us more or less per 6V deep cycle battery. if you are going with a 24V system you need banks of 4. So that is $400 or so per bank. I have  2 banks or 8 batteries but wish I had more. The problem with the batteries is you need to buy them all together at one time and have them hooked up together. SO YOU CAN NOT DO ONE PIECE AT A TIME!!!

To increase your lifespan on batteries you need to keep in mind a few things. Check the water at least once a week. Distilled water for batteries costs less than $2.00 a gallon here and it is sold in every store you can think off. Keep the terminals clean. Baking soda works. Do not run your batteries all the way down. Most of the automatic inverters will shut off to protect your batteries. And look at buying a desulfater. They increase the life of your batteries by breaking up the sulfur crystals on the plates inside.

Time for 6th grade science. To get 24 volts from 6v batteries you will run four batteries in a series just like you do in a big truck with a 24 system. You just use four 6v batteries instead of two 12v. Once you have the 24v bank set up you replicate it how ever many times you decide which is usually based on how much you can afford and then run them parallel.

The following should be taken with a grain of salt. Ok one bank of four deep cycle batteries will give you about four to  five hours of full load on a 2.4kw inverter. So for each four hours of full load you want add four more batteries. When I was new here I used to keep tabs on charging times and so forth. If I had an eight hour black out I needed four hours of power to get my battery bank up to full charge. On the inverter I have there is a setting that lets me decide how fast to charge batteries. The slower the charge time the better it is for the batteries. However here with the short power spurts and long black outs the needs is for fast charging. I need to charge the batteries fast. The bottom line is for power we are in crisis mode most of the time.

 Now if you reduce your needs you increase your time. So decide what you really need for how long and that reduces you charge time. If you are in a winter storm and want to  increase the time between charging by putting your frozen food on the back porch to stay frozen and unplug the freezer you may just cut down by two or three hours a day    you need to run your generator. I use a power hogging desktop to surf the net where a laptop would reduce my needs.

Alternative Energy