Something to keep in mind when you desire your battery to have a
relatively long life. Taking out 50% of the capacity will, in general,
seriously shorten a battery's life as compared to only drawing it down
to 80%. Most renewable energy systems shoot for the 70 - 80% mark.
Since we're talking emergency battery operation here, it can be assumed
that you'll likely be drawing the batteries down quite a bit before a
recharge. Higher capacity batteries are always better - other than in
size & weight.
My suggestion is to do this right. Don't use any kind of flooded
battery (with removable caps to add water), or "maintenance-free"
flooded batteries - same internally but you can't add water. True
maintenance-free batteries are either gel or AGM. Gel batteries can
supposedly handle really deep discharges better, but I wouldn't worry
about that. Good AGM batteries beat gel in every other respect. Some
manufacturer's charts show more discharge-charge cycles for their gel
than competitor's AGMs, but from what I've heard in real-world
scenarios, AGMs are more robust and actually hold up longer.
Concorde AGM batteries came out clearly as the best AGM in the months of
on-line research I did when recommending new batteries for work, and
their price was comparable to anything else out there. No relation, but
http://thesolar.biz/Concorde_Battery.htm has one of the best prices out
there for the 100 and 105 Ah Concorde batteries.
Hope this helps a little.
--
73,
Mike Boice, KW1ND
Karns, TN
Behold the power of the penguin
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