Terminology
The average Voltage a battery will hold throughout one cycle, measured in Volts (V)
- Nominal Voltage along with Rated Capacity are the two main characteristics that will define your battery system’s operating limits by defining the overall power your system holds.
- Nominal Voltage of a system can be increased by adding batteries in series
The total amount of power a battery is capable of providing in one full discharge cycle, measured in Ampere hours or Amps per hour (Ah)
- Rated Capacity along with Nominal Voltage are the two main characteristics that will define your battery system’s operating limits by defining the overall power your system holds.
- Rated Capacity of a system can be increased by adding batteries in parallel
The process of discharging a battery and subsequently charging it back up, returning all Energy consumed. It is commonly accepted that one cycle is complete when %80 of the battery Energy is expended and then fully returned to the battery.
- The DOD to which you cycle your batteries directly relates to the overall Cycle Life of the battery. Typically, the lower the depth of discharge that you cycle batteries is, the longer of a Cycle Life/lifespan your battery will have.
This is a measure of the usable Energy remaining in the battery. The percentage of available battery Charge, relative to its Rated Capacity.
SOC = Remaining Capacity/ Rated Capacity
Q. You have a 100Ah rated battery and have used 20Ah total to power a pump. What is the battery’s SOC?
A. The remaining capacity is 100Ah – 20Ah = 80Ah
SOC = 80Ah/ 100Ah = 80%
80% SOC
- The SOC can be monitored to know how much power is remaining in a battery. This value can be expressed with an LCD monitor, Bluetooth monitoring. In order to monitor the SOC, a Shunt must be used in the circuit
This describes the amount of Current (Amps) being drawn from the battery as a percentage of total Rated Capacity. C-rate helps to determine the proper charge and discharge rates for LFP batteries.
0.2C states that Power is being drawn at a rate of 20% relative the battery capacity. For a 100Ah rated battery, 0.2C equates to 20A of discharge Current.
Q. You have a 200Ah rated battery and are currently discharging 100A. What is the C-rate (C)?
A. C = 100A/ 200Ah = 0.5
50% C-rate or 0.5C
- For people that are new to Lithium Ion batteries/upgrading from lead acid batteries, C Rate might be an unfamiliar term, but you have likely seen it before in another form. In lead acid batteries, the capacity is listed as the Amp Hour rating for a 20-hour discharge, or 0.05C, in order to list a reasonable capacity rating, as lead acid is not able to provide the same level of capacity at higher discharge rates. (link)
The amount of complete charges and discharges a battery can be used before it can no longer hold a charge. The cycle life directly relates to the DOD to which you are Cycling your batteries at.
- Everyone wants the longest Cycle Life possible. To achieve this, there are many factors that must be thought over; DOD, SOC, C Rate, Charging, BMS Protections, Cell Balancing, Temperature, Weatherproofing and Storage are a few of the big factors to start thinking of.
The percentage of which a battery is discharged in relation to its fully charged state. The lower the DOD you use, the more Cycle Life a battery will have.
- If you are running at 80% DOD, you are using up 80% of the battery capacity before charging back to a full SOC
An electronic system designed to manage a battery by monitoring its state, calculating secondary data, reporting that data, protecting the battery, controlling its environment, and/or Cell Balancing it
An electronic device that changes direct current (DC) to alternating current (AC)
- In a solar grid system, solar panels produce DC energy. If the end user wants to power anything that utilizes AC energy (like any household/recreational-vehicle appliances, an inverter needs to be used to convert the DC power from the Solar Charge Controller into AC power.
An electronic device that changes alternating current (AC) into direct current (DC)
This device acts as a regulator between the solar panel and the battery. It ensures that the battery is charged properly when the sun is up, and that the battery does not discharge through the solar panel when the sun is down.
- Typically, in many off grid solar setups, a solar charger is used alongside solar panels, an inverter and a battery bank to store all the produced energy. Talk to us about our complete off-grid solar packages!
A device that pulls and measures a fraction of the current running through a circuit, in order to allow you to measure amps, amp hours and total power of your system.
- We at Lynac, utilize shunts in order to run monitoring systems, like LCD screens as well as Bluetooth Monitoring. This allows us and customers to view the SOC of batteries.
Equalizer’s should be used when connecting multiple batteries in one system. The function of an equalizer is to ensure all batteries in one system are maintained at the same voltage. This is needed as one or more batteries may be discharging at a slightly faster rate than the others.
Not using an Equalizer will lead to battery systems cutting out before it’s full DOD once a single battery is discharged fully, while the other batteries may still have usable power.
Same thing goes for charging. One battery might reach full charge before the others, triggering a stop to the battery charger, while the other batteries are still not at SOC.
These problems can all be avoided by simply using an Equalizer in your setup.
This refers to the power being supplied from a charger to a battery after it has reached it’s full SOC. The Float voltage compensates for a battery’s natural discharge by supplying an equal amount of power from the charger.
This is our standard line of batteries. All of the batteries in this line feature our BMS to ensure that your battery is safe and functions how you expect it to. While these batteries may be lacking the features of the other battery lines, they are perfect if simple is all you need.
These are our Temperature Protection line of batteries. These batteries feature the same BMS as our LLT line, with the inclusion of Temperature Protection.
While discharging batteries in low temperatures poses no problem, charging at low temperatures runs the risk of causing permanent damage. To prevent damage to the batteries during charging, the BMS automatically stops charging the batteries if the temperature reaches below 0℃. Once the battery has warmed up, the BMS can be reset, allowing for charge to resume.
These are the perfect line of batteries if you think temperatures might get low while you are charging.
This is our Bluetooth Monitoring line of batteries. The batteries in this line provide the same protections as the LTT line, the standard BMS and Temperature Protection.
The Bluetooth Monitoring allows you to monitor your battery in real time via the Bluetooth App and/ or Serial Communication port. You are able to check battery status including Temperature, Discharge Current, Charge Current, Voltage, Cycles and SOC.