Place batteries in a battery containment system that houses the entire battery
and its fluid in the event of a spill or broken container.
Place batteries in a locked, secured room or cabinet that is not
easily accessible.
Keep the battery storage cabinet out of the sun and at manufacturer’s
recommended temperatures.
Do not place batteries directly on concrete.
Keep batteries and terminals clean.
Remove all tools used around batteries to reduce any accidental
electrical hazards.
The goal of any battery is to produce the current necessary to power a given
mechanism. The purpose of battery wiring is to uniformly charge and discharge all
the batteries. This requires balancing the voltage and current in each battery as a
part of the battery bank or battery array. The easy way to do this is through proper
battery and cable sizing and configuration so batteries set up in a string have a uni-
form current flow. Batteries configured in parallel are much more complex.
Unequal voltage and current flow are caused by a myriad of factors, including:
Changes in cable resistance
Improper cables, cable terminals, and termination
Varying types of batteries with different manufacturers and/or different ages
Unequal temperatures
Differing charge and discharge characteristics
The weakest battery in an array will negatively impact the whole array,
including:
Reducing the array capacity
Shortening the array life
Causing a cascading failure that will destroy the whole battery bank
A drop in battery voltage due to improper battery wiring
greatly impacts PV power system performance. Voltage drops
hinder the current from being the same across every battery.
A remedy for this is to use large conductors, battery cables,
and terminal connectors.
A second solution for voltage drops is to have the nega-
tive and positive points on the battery bank on opposing sides
of the battery bank. Opposite sides and opposing corners counterbalance the
drop in voltage across battery pairs. In essence, this causes energy flow to and
from all the batteries evenly.
Electricity flows like water; the distances and paths must be equal to achieve
the best flow.
NOTE
Do not add new batteries to old, mix
battery types, or combine batteries of a
different group or age.
CHAPTER 7 PV Technology—Cells, Panels, Arrays, Balance of System, and Inverters 167
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