Saturday, July 12, 2008

Battery information

I took Friday off work and did a spot of shopping with my wife. At the shopping centre there was a new-ish shop called "Battery World" to which I was drawn like a moth to flame...

We had a good look around and had a long chat with the sales rep. The batteries I'm after for the EV is something like an Ultimate UL-120. Here's the specs:

Capacity (100Ah): 141
Size: 409(L) x 177(W) x 225(H)
Weight: 36.4kg (OOOF)
CCA: 963 at 20c
Thread size: 8mm
Reserve Capacity after 1 hour: 75A
Cost: About $400 each (OUCH) (bulk discount negotiable)

Next time I'll ask about Optima Yellow Tops and see how they compare...

We also spotted a solar lighting kit of $305 which includes a solar panel, battery, controller and 2 12v energy-saver lights. We're thinking we can set up the panel outside and run most of our night-time lighting requirements off it.

I've also been looking around for a Killawatt device to measure the energy drain that our appliances take. That way we can compare the energy stored in the batteries with the appliances we want to run at night. Hopefully we can run a couple of lights and the computer off the solar setup initially, and then increase the number of batteries/panels as required.

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