What should the discharge settings be for 6 volt lead acid solar batteries?

TheVillagesGuy

What should the discharge settings be for 6 volt lead acid solar batteries? Maximum Discharge Current Percentage and Maximum Discharge Time Interval? My setup is 16 6 volt batteries in series and parallel = 48 volts and 460 ah.

BB.

The standard for flooded cell lead acid batteries for discharge current use the 20 hour capacity number "C" of the batteries:

• C/20 hour discharge or 5% is a nice easy discharge and a good average discharge for 5 hours per night for 2 nights (10 hour discharge) and leaves 50% still in the battery bank.
• C/8 hour discharge or 12.5% (or 13%) is the maximum rated discharge suggested (for less than 4 hours to 50% discharge)
• C/5 hour discharge or 20% discharge is maximum short term discharge (minutes to an hour)--Tools, pumps, etc.
• C/2.5 hour discharge or 40% discharge rate is maximum for surge current, starting motors, etc. (seconds to minute).

You have a 460 AH battery bank, use that for "C".

Is this what you are looking for?

-Bill

TheVillagesGuy

BB. said:

The standard for flooded cell lead acid batteries for discharge current use the 20 hour capacity number "C" of the batteries:

• C/20 hour discharge or 5% is a nice easy discharge and a good average discharge for 5 hours per night for 2 nights (10 hour discharge) and leaves 50% still in the battery bank.
• C/8 hour discharge or 12.5% (or 13%) is the maximum rated discharge suggested (for less than 4 hours to 50% discharge)
• C/5 hour discharge or 20% discharge is maximum short term discharge (minutes to an hour)--Tools, pumps, etc.
• C/2.5 hour discharge or 40% discharge rate is maximum for surge current, starting motors, etc. (seconds to minute).

You have a 460 AH battery bank, use that for "C".

Is this what you are looking for?

-Bill

I am looking for the bottom two settings shown in this pic.

BB.

I would suggest starting at:

• 460 AH / 2.5 surge = 184 Amps @ 10 seconds
• 184 amps * 48 volts * 0.85 inverter eff = 7,507 Watt AC surge support

I am not an expert--And, of course, your wiring has to support such current too.

-Bill