19
Of course that depends on the battery, but Lithium Ion batteries were the standard for laptop/cellphone batteries last time I checked.
A battery feels most happy
being neither too full nor too empty,
being not too hot,
being not charged/recharged too often.
If you don't need the battery, remove it from the battery pack (at about 60%) and store it dry and ...
13
Short:
For equipment which takes "standard size" plug in AA / C / D cells -
-> Low self discharge NimH cells or batteries.
Sanyo Eneloop are an excellent example of this technology, but not the only choice.
For equipment which can be designed to make best use of the battery - and best result overall
-> Lithium Ferro Phosphate - a Lithium variant.
Longer:...
13
A specific answer to your very narrow question wouldn't be much use to anyone else; and you haven't given us enough information to give you a specific answer anyway.
But what we can do, is give you the types of information you'd need to make a decision.
And I'll restrict it just to PV and wind, as that's what you've asked about; others reading this might ...
12
Disclosure: Doing things such as this is my 'day job'.
You can use a bicycle dynamo to recharge a suitable battery at very little expense and with minimal effort. Use of something like the "Reecharger" that you mention is not essential, does extremely little for you and, if their description of their own products are accurate, the Reecharger is a badly ...
10
According to this study by Uniross, yes - rechargables are beneficial overall. Up to 32 times more beneficial! This is mainly due to reducing the amount of energy required to manufacture - as well as reducing the amount of waste.
Based on each kwh produced, the study states that rechargable batteries produce:
23 times less potential impact on non-renewable ...
10
Technical terms
To partially understand the process of draining batteries it is important to know some technical parameters:
voltage - Battery operated electric devices need certain minimal voltage level and current to work correctly. As a battery is being drained the voltage drops down. In some batteries the voltage goes down very slowly during most of ...
9
I read somewhere that one issue (of several) that tends to shorten the lifetime of laptop batteries is heat from other components inside the laptop. So, if you happen to not be "on the move" with your laptop all the time, but instead end up using your laptop at the same desk for several days/weeks in a row, then you should remove the battery (don't forget to ...
9
I use Sanyo Eneloop recharchables (1.2 volts in size AA and AAA).
They have a very high lifetime, do not self-discharge as other NiMH and NiCad accumulators do, and have a high current untill they are empty (alkaline batteries have a much lower current and a linearly decreasing voltage—therefore alkalines are not suitable for digital cameras and the like).
...
8
It's very unlikely: all the modern chargers I've seen have an automatic cutout that prevents over-charging, by monitoring the batteries' voltage, and stopping the current when it reaches a certain level. As rechargeable batteries reach fully charged, the voltage rises relatively quickly, and the cutout gets activated.
If the batteries were exceptionally ...
8
Constraints
There are several aspects to energy storage, that can make one form better than another for a given set of circumstances.
Cost is usually the biggest driver. Energy can be stored at pretty much any scale you like, and cost is typically the constrainer.
There are additional constraints for within-household energy storage: in particular, safety, ...
7
I've rebuilt two single-battery operated appliances in our home to a "battery juicer". I'll describe one of them here to explain the idea, the other one is remade in a similar way to this one. Both of them operate happily with half-drained batteries and I've reached the balance of incoming half-drained batteries and draining them almost totally in those ...
5
It would work, but there isn't much reason to do it. If you do this without batteries, you are giving up most of the potential advantages.
If you simply have an internal combustion engine (petrol or diesel, hereafter an ICE) driving a generator driving electric motor(s), then the engine must rev up and down according to the load from the motors at that ...
5
Your friend is wrong and here's why.
Lithium is mined once and can be reused in any number of vehicles. When the vehicle breaks, its lithium will replace newly mined lithium. If we need let's say 2 billion cars on the road with batteries, they need a certain fixed amount of lithium. If we need 2 billion oil-burning cars on the road, they will continuously ...
5
I am not an expert on mining, but I do know my way on fossil fuel extraction. Getting oil from the earth and making it into fuel is not as easy as it sounds, and really the process is way more contaminant than extracting metals from the ground.
To make it more clear I can try to explain it in parallel, in both you extract the resource from the ground, ...
4
The concept has been used in heavy duty mining trucks for decades. Diesel powered locomotive engines power an electric generator that then powers electric motors located on the rear axles of the trucks which then turn the wheels. One of my college lecturers mentioned in the early 1980s.
This was the solution to the engineering problem of not being able to ...
4
Based on this article, it sounds like the NiMH batteries could be safely used with a charging system that is designed to slowly charge NiCad batteries.
However, the lifetime of a NiMH battery charged that way may be poor compared with a NiCd one. The same question was asked in a battery forum, and one of the responses was:
The cheaper priced NiCd is a ...
4
The immediate previous sentence says:
The other unknown that BNEF considers is the rise of autonomous cars and ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft, which would all put more cars on the road that drive more than 20,000 miles a year.
If there is a benefit to electric vehicles per mile driven, that benefit will be realized more quickly by someone who'...
4
Customer preference has been crucial at the start of adoption. Early adopters are driven more by non-financial features than by price. However, those early adopters only take a market so far. At the moment, they are the people buying Teslas.
However, they are not the main market for PV, and globally haven't been for a decade or so (they will still be in ...
3
Despite advertising "low power draw," the power is not available in any materials I can find, but the current is given as "approximately 4.5 amps." The technology used is thermoelectric refrigeration (or Peltier cooling) meaning that the unit is essentially always drawing 4.5 amps, not cycling on and off like a traditional refrigerator.
The battery you ...
3
The article is considering the total costs of ownership of electric vs internal combustion engined (ICE) cars, including purchase and running costs. One of the benefits of electric cars is that fuel costs are very low; the car costs more to buy, but costs less to run. The point at which owning an electric vehicle becomes more economical than an ICE one ...
3
Combining wind turbine and solar panel is my favorite (that has not come to reality by now...). Both of them are weather dependent but in an almost anti-correlated way. It means they complement each other very well most of the time of the year.
Here in continental Europe, usually when it's a sunny day it's rarely windy. And when the weather is changing or in ...
3
Li-Ion batteries are worth recycling just for the lithium in them. This material can be re-refined, and made into new batteries. In this use they should show similar cost savings to recycled vs new aluminum.
There is also the prospect of repurposing a worn battery for stationary use. E.g. It stores 30 kWh in your car for 3 years, then stores 10 kWh in ...
2
Burying it is a bad idea particularly for lead acid batteries. The case will eventually break down, then the solutions will leach downward into the water table.
Here we have to put down a $10 deposit on a car battery. The deposit is waived if we bring a battery with us.
The current limit for Pb in water is 5 ppb. And there is some discussion that ...
2
My Spanish isn't great, but I think that on the website of this Argentinian recycling company called Silkers SA they are saying that you should:
Check the website of the producer of the battery if they accept it back.
Check this webpage of the city of Buenos Aires (however, this link reports "service unavailable" and "Sitio en Mantenimiento" at the time ...
2
I've read somewhere that this occurs because over time the positive plates of lead acid batteries corrode. The plates grow and start pushing at the weakest point which usually is the pole.
This article briefly describes the process and mentions that you cannot prevent it, but you can take measures to avoid rapid corrosion:
Limiting the depth of ...
2
Lead crystal batteries (at least the ones I'm familiar with) are batteries that use salt crystals as the electrolyte. There are many different crystals that can be used. I have been experimenting with converting lead acid batteries to lead crystal batteries. You can find videos on how to do this on Youtube and at various DIY websites by doing a search. The ...
2
Recharging details for lead-acid batteries are detailed in many places (for example).
Quoting the linked site:
Recharge time can be approximated by dividing the amp hours to be
replaced by 90% of the rated output of the charger. For example, a 100
amp hour battery with a 10 % discharge would need 10 amps replaced.
Using a 5 amp charger, we have 10 amp ...
2
Reuse beats recycling. The active duty life span of an EV battery (cells and control electronics both) is hugely longer outside of an EV, so reclaiming lithium from them should be a last resort only at the point where no more economical uses for them exist.
Thinking of the huge electric vehicle batteries as resources to recycle, once they no longer serve ...
2
Energy losses in a cable — due to resistance — are proportional to the current squared (I²). Thus if you double the current (by putting your panels in parallel) then you'll quadruple your losses ( (2I)² = 4I² ).
When panels are connected in series, the voltages add up but the current remains constant. Thus to minimise line losses, connect panels in series....
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