The Battery is the heart of your electrical installation.
You may have the best solar panels and solar charger, if you don't have a good battery your system will not work properly. Batteries come in many sizes and types. Below we list the most commonly used with their pros and cons.
- SEMI-TRACTION LEAD BATTERY
A semi-traction lead-acid battery is basically an ordinary car starter battery, this is the cheapest but also worst option. a normal starter battery is not designed for deep discharge and will be permanently damaged from 50% discharge. a 100ah battery then only has an actual capacity of 50ah for example. - AGM BATTERY
An AGM battery is a special 'dry' lead-acid battery, which is made for deep discharges and heavy use. perfect for a camper. For us it is the golden mean between cost and quality. For this we have also chosen for Debie a Beaut AGM battery. You can discharge this battery to +- 75% without sustaining permanent damage. - LI-FE-PO4 BATTERY
These batteries are by far the most performant. You can discharge them 100%, have a much longer life and you can charge them much faster. the only major drawback is the cost. they cost many times more than other batteries and must also be specially charged by an (expensive) DC-DC charger or a solar/shore power charger specifically intended for lithium.
What size do I need?
Out of choice what type of battery you need it is of course also important to do not take a battery that is too small. There is no such thing as too much battery capacity. But in fact, like everything else, it's about finding a good balance between cost and battery life.
Everything depends on your consumption. The more electricity you want to use, the bigger your battery. Above that, the longer you want to stand still without charging from the electricity grid, the larger your battery system must be.
It's best to to list all your consumers and record their consumption. then you know how much electricity you use per day.
Once you know your daily consumption, you can adjust your battery capacity accordingly.
Read more about this in our solar panels chapter.
We have a Beaut AGM 180ah battery, this is sufficient for us as we do not have large consumers in the bus. It is a very decent battery and we are very happy with it.
