Battery Storage For Home Solar System – Using The Hydrometer

One of the key components of a home solar power system is the battery bank. All the power generated by the solar panel will go to the charge controller and end up in the battery.

The kind of battery used for a residential solar power system is the deep cycle type or marine boat batteries. The number of battery needed will depend on your energy requirement.

Since you are going to spend substantial amount of money on the battery bank, it makes sense to take good care of them. One way of doing so is to regularly check the fluid in the battery. In order to do this, you will need to learn how to use a battery hydrometer.

How do you use the hydrometer?

The battery hydrometer is a glass tube with a suction bulb that draws the electrolyte from the battery into the tube. When that happens, the float inside the tube begins to rise.

On the float, you will see some markings on it. You can see a long red strip, a narrow white strip and then a little wider green strip.

How do the markings work?

Well, if it floats off and it’s in the green marking, that means the battery is in pretty good shape. When more of the float sticks out of the electrolyte in the glass tube, meaning the stronger the battery is.

If it floats up until the white strip, that means the battery is only in a fair shape. If the electrolyte goes up into the red strip marking, the battery really needs to be reconditioned.

When that happens, the charge controller may not be able to charge the battery to its full potential with the energy from the solar panel. You may have to pull out the battery and send it for servicing and to get a full recharge.

What will happen if you were leave the battery there?

If you were to do so, the battery will reached a critical level of discharge and it may damage the battery permanently. As a good practice, a battery should not be discharged beyond the 50% mark before recharge.

Although a deep cycle battery can handle deep level discharge, doing it too often will reduce its efficiency.

If you are looking for a battery hydrometer for your home solar system

battery bank, check out the Imperial 5991 Battery Test Hydrometer. You can get it cheaply from Amazon.com.

Related web pages:

1) Michael Harvey Earth 4 Energy Review – Reviewing top selling DIY home solar power system guide on the web.

Earth 4 Energy Download Location – Where to Download The Earth4Energy E-book



If you are planning to use solar or wind energy for your home, most probably you will begin your research on the internet. When you are doing your research on the web, sooner or later, you will come across the Earth 4 Energy e-book by Michael Harvey.

Earth4Energy is one of the top selling home renewable energy guides on the internet. It sells by the thousands of copies every month.

Even with its popularity, many people are still not very sure where to download the e-book. In this article, I will explain the purchase process for the manual.

The main web site of Earth4Energy is located at www.earth4energy.com. It is a standard sales copy explaining the benefits of the manual.

At the bottom of the page, there is a “Add To Cart” button. Clicking on the button will bring you to the Secure Payment transaction form. At this stage, you may notice the Clickbank Marketplace logo.

If this is your first online purchase, you may not have heard of Clickbank.

Clickbank is actually the largest portal on the internet that sells information products and software. Clickbank handles millions of dollars of online transaction every year. It is a trusted and reputable company.

If you want to download the Earth4Energy e-book, Clickbank will handle the transaction for you. This means you do not deal directly with the publisher from Earth4Energy.

When someone purchased anything from Clickbank, he is automatically covered by their 60 days money back guarantee policy. For whatever reason, if you do not like what you have purchased, you can ask for a full refund within 60 days from the purchase date.

The mistake that many people made is going back to the publisher to ask for a refund. Most of the time, they will not get any support from the publisher because they went to the wrong channel. Clickbank has an entire system to handle refund.

When you are buying the Earth4Energy guide, you have 2 payment options. You can choose to pay by credit or debit card or you can select the Paypal option. Everything is very seamless.

When you are done with the transaction process, Clickbank will email to you a Purchase Receipt. You will also receive an email from the publisher of Earth4Energy with a link to the members’ download area. You can now begin to download the pdf and video files on to your computer.

==> Click here to visit Earth 4 Energy now!

 

Home Solar Power System Battery Bank Safety Tips



When designing your home solar power system, always begin by doing an energy audit and find out how much electricity your home is consuming.

Next, decide how many electrical appliances you want to connect to the solar power system. That figure will help you to decide how many deep cycle battery you will need for the battery bank.

The batteries can be arranged in different ways to get the voltage you’ll need for your power inverter. If you are using a 1000 watt at12 volt power inverter, you will need 2 units of 6 volts batteries connected in series to come up with the 12 volts.

The most dangerous part of this process is the liquid in the battery. The liquid is sulfuric acid that will seriously burn you. As a safety precocious, always have some baking soda nearby to neutralize the acid in case you spilled some on your body.

You can check the acid in the battery by using a hydrometer. A hydrometer is what you use to measure the actual specific gravity of the acid inside.

On the hydrometer, you can see several discs floating. For example, if you see 3 discs floating with one at the bottom, you’ll know the battery is about 75% charged.

Here’s another safety tip. The gasses that come off from the battery, hydrogen gas (H2), can be hazardous as well. It is highly flammable. Make sure you work with the batteries in an open space and no sparks or open flame nearby.

DIY Home Solar Power Guide

Are you planning to build your own home solar power system? If you are, check out Michael Harvey’s Earth 4 Energy guide.

Michael’s e-book comes with step by step instructions on how to make a DIY solar panel with minimal cost. Check out my review of Earth4Energy on this blog for more information.

==> Click here to visit Earth4Energy now!