The Most Exciting Blog Post Ever Written!

Our New Batteries

What? You don’t find a post about batteries exciting? Perhaps you should. There are massive changes happening in the science of batteries. I know, it’s hard to get excited about something we all take for granted but the humble battery is seeing a lot of innovation.

As the world looks for more sustainable energy sources like solar or wind power we need a way to store that power for when those sources of energy aren’t available. For solar energy we need a way to store the sun’s energy so we can use it at night or on cloudy days. The same is true for wind power. We need to be able to store the energy for days that aren’t windy. This is where batteries fit in. There has been a lot of innovation in battery technology recently. Many people are working to find ways to store renewable energy as efficiently and effectively as possible.

I’m sure everyone is familiar with lithium batteries which have had a big impact on small electronics like phones and recently larger things like cars. They are starting to be used on boats too but they are not quite ready for our needs. For us to switch to lithium batteries we’d have to switch out several of the systems we use to charge and monitor our batteries. The cost to do this isn’t worth it for us.

Instead we have gone with 6v Dry Cell AGM batteries by Discover Batteries. They are wired in a combination of series and parallel to give us the 12v that we need. The 6v batteries are smaller and easier to work with than what we had before. They are sealed so we don’t have to worry about acid spills. Also, they give us about 25% more battery capacity but take up less space than what we had before. More capacity is always great!

We put in the new batteries a few weeks ago and have found them awesome. Previously I worried about turning out lights the moment we didn’t need them. I still worry about turning out unnecessary lights but not quite so much now.