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Article: Battery options for your off-grid home.(Life on the sunny side)
- Article from:
- Countryside & Small Stock Journal
- Article date:
- November 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Countryside Publications Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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There's nothing sexy about off-grid storage batteries; they're heavy, clunky and sometimes smelly. We off-gridders hide them away in dark places and don't look at them any more than we have to. We think about them only when they're getting low on charge or need a little maintenance, and we ignore them the rest of the time. But for all that neglect, those of us who rely on them to store solar and wind energy to power our homes need them every minute of every day.
That's because there is a great disparity between the way we use solar energy and the way the sun doles it out. In a well-designed solar-electric system, the sun will provide, on average, appreciably ...