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Like to be of some help monkeywrenching, but all the systems I have installed or used with solar etc. have been 12 volt.
Work fine for small systems that don't require a lot of energy such as lights or occasional use of a refrigerator salvaged from a camper.
For small applications like that, 12 volt deep charge marine batteries work well. Usually pretty inexpensive, I just got them at the local sporting goods store. They all seemed pretty much the same to me, at least none of them were outstanding in any way.
I only know about 12 volt too. More than 7 years ago i helped to install 2 solar panels and a large bank of batteries engineers figured out all the details too. They figured a bit too much and and one panel was covered over, and still in winter on gray days that system was bootin up too much power for what it had to run.
Everyone worries about not enough, and then in this case there was too much and it was off the grid entirely.
My buddy was making a hydrogen farm inside his bloomin cellar! LOL
the reasons I have for wanting to use 48 volt batteries, is that with a 50% discharge, expected life is supposed to be 15-20 years for the batteries. but I have never worked with batteries that size before.
the reasons I have for wanting to use 48 volt batteries, is that with a 50% discharge, expected life is supposed to be 15-20 years for the batteries. but I have never worked with batteries that size before.
Erm, don't want to confuse the issue, but...
24V banks are most commonly created with 2 12V batteries in series (or 4 6V in series, or 6 2V in series) "parallelled" with a number of the same config other Banks
48V are 4 12V (or 8 6V or 12 2V) batteries.
It's exactly the same way as a 12V Lead Acid battery is constructed in reality. A lead acid cell has an open circuit voltage of 2.1V (that's basic electrochemistry), string six together and you get 12.6V. So if you take an external conductor and connect the ground of one battery to the positive of another you get 25.2V OC across the disconnected ground of one battery, and the disconnected positive of the other.
I'd just go looking for 2V, 6V, or 12V Lead acids. Since no matter the materials used (LA, LIon, NiMH, LiFePO4, etc...) ultimately they're all connected in the same way either internally or externally to produce some voltage that's commonly used.
24V banks are most commonly created with 2 12V batteries in series (or 4 6V in series, or 6 2V in series) "parallelled" with a number of the same config other Banks
48V are 4 12V (or 8 6V or 12 2V) batteries.
It's exactly the same way as a 12V Lead Acid battery is constructed in reality. A lead acid cell has an open circuit voltage of 2.1V (that's basic electrochemistry), string six together and you get 12.6V. So if you take an external conductor and connect the ground of one battery to the positive of another you get 25.2V OC across the disconnected ground of one battery, and the disconnected positive of the other.
I'd just go looking for 2V, 6V, or 12V Lead acids. Since no matter the materials used (LA, LIon, NiMH, LiFePO4, etc...) ultimately they're all connected in the same way either internally or externally to produce some voltage that's commonly used.
will check some more into that. I know where i work they use huge batteries for emergency power, sets of 300 batteries in each bank.
As Gungnir mentions, all a common 12v battery is are 6 cells of 2v wired together internally.
If you put all the individual batteries in that 12-to-48 diagram inside a box with positive and negative terminal showing on the outside... it would look like a 48v "battery". But it would be a really big box!!!
ETA: size and weight are a limiting factor in "man portable" batteries; which is why things kind of top out at 12v for any usable amount of power. You could build a man-portable battery that is 48v (12 cells of 2v) but it would only store/provide a small amount of power (like 30 minutes or less of "normal" usage).
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