Trying To Cool The Solar Batteries In The Summer

A Cooling Enclosure

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As was said on the "Shade For ..." page:

Our solar batteries have been dying, over and over, through the years. The primary reason has been the summer heat. This has only recently become clear to us. There were other reasons at times, more readily obvious, and sometimes there were not. For most of the time it was more elusive and confusing, mysterious, as to why some, or all, would weaken and die.

In the summer of 2016 we heard from our solar guy that it was way to hot in the solar room. Shortly thereafter, our computer guy indicated that the heat in there was hot enough to destroy the computer.

In March of 2017 I installed a 5,000 BTU Frigidaire air conditioner plugged into a timer that would turn it on after the sun hit the solar panels and off as the sun went behind the far range. I worried that it might eat too much of the power from the battery bank and everything would shut down. That never happened. In fact, I know now that I could and should have let it run another few hours.

In May of that year, while topping off the batteries, I discovered that one was completely dead, so I immediately bought a replacement in town at AutoZone (for $144). As a last minute thought, I placed our weather clock where the indoor camera could see it while we were 3000 miles away. Then I hopped the plane to return east for the summer.

If everything is working right, I can log in and take a look through that camera. Also the Blue Iris software will snap a picture periodically and put it into my OneDrive cloud folder. In the evening, 3000 miles away, I can stream those pictures and others using software that I wrote for the purpose.

It showed that the AC was indeed working. While it was 109 degrees outside it was only 107 inside. I can extrapolate that a year prior, that 109 outside temperature could have escalated to 119 inside that closed and locked room, or more. Only? 107 degrees is still too hot for the battery bank.

On our return in the fall, we bought 15 batteries from solar-biz.com for $1760 minus the $123 that Morongo Basin Recycling in town paid us for the old batteries.

At about the same time I began buying 'Grabber Outdoor' All-Weather insulated blankets online and the hardware to assemble a floor-to-ceiling heat shield partition to isolate all batteries, electronics and the air conditioner inside one well-insulated enclosure. That story is depicted below.

And at about the same time I began to assemble a big shade to keep the sun off of the south side of the solar shed. That is described on another page.

Of course when the AC shuts off at the end of the day, it can then become a heat trap.
At 9:45 PM on July 6, it was 105 degrees in there while it was only 96 outside.
On August 7 at 5:15, it was 107 degrees inside while it was 101 outside.

Fortunately, most evenings are not that bad.
However, I am going to add another two hours to the AC's timer. I think the battery bank can handle that in the summertime without shutting down.
We will see.