Should You Expand Your Battery Bank or Replace It?

When designing a solar power system, it’s important to plan for the future. However, the future is never perfectly certain, and it’s not uncommon for a solar power user to find that the system they designed several years ago is no longer meeting their needs. This is particularly common with solar batteries; if a battery bank is undersized, an off-grid solar power system will frequently rely on backup power sources like generators, which comes with additional costs. So, if your solar battery bank is no longer meeting your power needs, it might be time to upgrade. But the question is, should you add batteries to the existing bank to increase capacity, or should you just replace the entire bank? Keep reading to learn more. 

Consider the Age

First and foremost, it’s important to consider the age of your existing battery bank. Most solar power batteries were not designed to last for more than a decade (and some for several years less than that). If your solar batteries are five years old or more, replacing them is the best option. Simply put, they’re going to need to be replaced in a few years anyway, and more recent models of solar batteries are much more efficient. Why go through the hassle of adding to an old, outdated battery bank when you could simply replace them with newer, more efficient batteries that meet your needs? 

Look at the Performance

Is storage capacity the only issue impacting your battery bank’s inability to meet your power storage needs? Or is it related to efficiency, depth of discharge, and other performance issues? You should compare the performance of your existing battery bank with the statistics of newer varieties of batteries. While you should obviously expect new models to be somewhat more efficient, if the differences are drastic, it may be worth it just to replace your entire bank. You’ll be able to get more storage from fewer batteries, allowing you to meet your power needs while using less space. 

Ask If It’s Even Possible

Finally, you may need to ask whether or not it’s even possible to add more batteries to your existing battery bank. Lead-acid batteries, for example, are usually connected in a series configuration, not in parallel. This type of connection makes it impossible to expand the number of units in your battery bank. Therefore, replacing them is the only option for getting more storage. 

If your existing batteries are relatively new, have good performance stats, and are connected to allow for adding new units, expanding your battery bank is a great option. If not, you should replace your old batteries with newer, more efficient ones, like the SimpliPhi LiFePh4 batteries.