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Inverter vs Generator

Why an Inverter?

When talking about mobile power solutions, someone always tries to make the correlation between an inverter and a generator. An inverter can be explained as “a generator that uses the battery as its fuel tank”.

But which is better?

Generator:

Generators are AC power supplies that use fossil fuels as their main source of energy. In other words, they use fuel (diesel or petrol) to run an engine. One of the major drawbacks of a generator is they can be inefficient and waste a lot of fuel if they’re not run at the appropriate load. Generators also unnecessarily pollute the environment. If your generator is run below seventy five percent of its rated capacity, this can cause carbon buildup on the critical engine components, shortening the life of your generator’s engine. In addition, generators are noisy & expensive to run and maintain. The running and service costs per Kwh can exceed R15.00/Kwh.
For more information on generators, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_generator.

Inverter

Inverters are also AC power supplies but they use stored DC electrical energy in a battery or battery bank. They use electronics and transformers to modify the DC to AC and then boost the voltage to create 220V. Inverters are extremely efficient, even when compared to generators, and only consume DC power in direct relation to the amount of AC power they put out.

Other major benefits of inverters are:

• they are virtually silent compared to generators;
• the batteries are charged when connected to the main utility power source, alternatively solar panels can be used to charge the batteries;
• they are comparatively light weight compared to generators;
• there is no need to store fuel (diesel or petrol);
• the running costs are much lower;
• there is little or no maintenance involved.

An inverter system is easily able to replace any power supplier, with the use of sufficient solar panels. The long-term benefits of such an investment require no justification. With our FCS K5 range, which is a modular system, you can add additional units as your demand increases (to a maximum of six units) providing for up to a total of 24000 W. Our products enable you to commence on a smaller more inexpensive scale and to increase the size and efficiency of your system should your needs require. This ensures you will never have to sell your inverter to buy a bigger one.

Our units are configurable to run as three phase inverters as well allowing 10000w three phase.

We at Full Circle Solar, offer a wide range of Solar Inverters for sale in South Africa, as well as inverter installation options if required. Our inverter models include popular brands such as Voltronic, Infinisolar, Axpert, Sunsynk and much more. We also sell inverter accessories such as Canadian Solar Panels, Narada Lithium Batteries, power trolleys, cables and connectors as well as repairs.

Batteries

Over the years batteries have been the main source of storing power. The first battery was invented by an Italian in the 1800's these were dry cell batteries as well as wet cells. The batteries were large and did not last long. over time it has been the hiccup in any energy storage system, how to store as much energy as possible. Thus over the years there has been huge focus on battery technology as well as many start up companies focussing on battery development.

The energy to weight ratio is always the factor as well as safety. When we started with Solar backup systems we started with lead acid batteries, these could be found with different separation media within the battery between the positive and negative cells, these could be either a Gel base or AGM " Absorbed glass matt" as the separation media. Batteries life span is measured in Cycles thus full to empty how many times. The disadvantage with Lead Acid batteries is that they can only be discharged to 50% of their capacity without damaging the battery. Thus a 200ah Lead Acid battery has an effective use of only 100A. They also have a relatively short life cycle ranging from a few hundred cycles to around 1000 cycles. Over the years many different chemistries have been tried. Of late the best option currently has been Lithium Ion Phosphate batteries. They offer the best weight to energy density as well as offering a cycle life of between 3500 and 6000 cycles. As well as letting you use up at least 90% of the batteries capacity without damaging it. One must take into account the more you discharge a lithium battery the less cycles you will get from that battery. Manufacturers show on there data sheets that the cycles are measured at a specific DOD "Depth of Discharge" if you discharge more than this the number of cycles will be reduced.

Where to next? there are many technologies being tested at the moment, Sodium based batteries, Graphene batteries, Flow Batteries, supercapacitors are a hot subject for debate, are they really capacitor-based batteries or not? why are none of the large manufacturers pursuing this technology. So currently Lithium-Ion Phosphate batteries are the best for our Backup power systems. In 10 years from now when we need to replace our batteries I’m sure there will be a new technology battery available. until then Lithium is our go to battery.