Solar Direct Current (DC) Microgrid for remote areas is relatively an emerging area and there have been installations in different parts of the world. Battery is the obvious storage device for such applications. Any empirical results as to which one among Lead Acid/Li-Ion is effective in a comprehensive perspective say on life-cycle basis?
Dear Mohammed Samdani,
First of all you should know all aspects of listed chemical power sources: cost, working temperatures, number of charge-discharge cycles, self-discharge parameters and others. Furthermore, for right choise you should take into account: working regime, requried capacity and currents, working temperature and region. All these parameters will help you to do right choise.
For example, If region for solar panels using will be in cool place: temperatures -10 : - 200C, Lead-acid batteries is not convenient due to worsening discharge parameters at low temperatures. Also they have small number of charge-discharge cycles and should be kept at charged state, thus, they can be used in case of periodical using... In the contrary Li-ion batteries have better parameters but they will cost much more...
So this is a complex problem to choose right type of chemical power source for different applications...
But why in your list of chemical power sources only 2 types? Why do you not consider for exaple Ni-Cd, Ni-Fe, Ni-MH accumulators?
In India I think lead acid will be a good bet as it's probably the cheapest. However they don't like being deeply discharged and the limited number of cycles may be a factor. As Valerii says, look at Ni based technologies. They should be attractive in Indian applications.
@Valerii Thanks for your input. You're right; it's complex. I wanted to look at some contextual empirical studies (especially from developing countries) that have taken into account the factors you've mentioned; any idea on that? The specific application I'm looking for is 24X7 supply for Solar-DC microgrid for a rural context in developing countries (completely off-grid).
@Valerii @Tony As far as Cost is concerned, I've seen that though Lead Acid batteries have a cheaper initial cost, because of the low number of cycles and depth of discharge constraints, they have a lower life and hence will have to replaced once in 4-5 years, thus significantly affecting the Net Present Cost (NPC) of the Solar system as a whole over its lifetime (say for 25 years or so). Whereas the NPC of Li-Ion batteries have an edge over Lead Acid Batteries priimarily because of its longer cycle life. Any thoughts on the comparison of NPC of Lead Acid and Li-Ion batteries?
Further would like to know how does Ni based batteries fare vis-a-vis Li-Ion give the application described above. Any pointers to such studies will be appreciated.
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