The battery bank is the heart of your system. You should see it as the most important part. Although they are expensive, you try not to cut corners and invest all you can in good batteries. In a later stage one can always ad more solar panels, install a more powerful inverter etc., but adding new batteries to an older bank is money thrown out of the window.
Battery types
An new type of lead based battery has been developed. The Lead Crystal, also called Silicon-lead battery.
It is a lead based battery, but instead of Sulfuric acid, the battery is filled with liquid SiO2, which solidifies after the first charging cycles. Silicon dioxide is a harmless, non toxic medium and the battery had gained superior qualities:
1) They ae absolutely maintenance free.
2) They are non toxic.
3) There is a minimal self discharge.
4) These batteries can be charged at a much faster rate, which can be important. The energy loss in the charge-discharge cycle is about 5% (> 20% for the classical lead acid battery).
3) These batteries can be deeply discharged, causing less damage than in any traditional lead-acid battery. . Hence a deep cycle life of over 3000 cycles is possible.
Our guess is that in the future most traditional lead-acid batteries will be displaced by these lead-crystal batteries. At the moment their price is already competitive!

The battery bank is the heart of your system. You should see it as the most important part. Although they are expensive, you try not to cut corners and invest all you can in good batteries. In a later stage one can always ad more solar panels, install a more powerful inverter etc., but adding new batteries to an older bank is money thrown out of the window.
Battery types
An new type of lead based battery has been developed. The Lead Crystal, also called Silicon-lead battery.
It is a lead based battery, but instead of Sulfuric acid, the battery is filled with liquid SiO2, which solidifies after the first charging cycles. Silicon dioxide is a harmless, non toxic medium and the battery had gained superior qualities:
1) They ae absolutely maintenance free.
2) They are non toxic.
3) There is a minimal self discharge.
4) These batteries can be charged at a much faster rate, which can be important. The energy loss in the charge-discharge cycle is about 5% (> 20% for the classical lead acid battery).
3) These batteries can be deeply discharged, causing less damage than in any traditional lead-acid battery. . Hence a deep cycle life of over 3000 cycles is possible.
Our guess is that in the future most traditional lead-acid batteries will be displaced by these lead-crystal batteries. At the moment their price is already competitive!