Renewable Energy Demonstration trailer

What does Depth of Discharge or DOD mean?

When you see information on batteries you often see their performanceDOD-vs-cycles-for-batteries talked about as their Depth of Discharge or DOD. This is the percentage of battery capacity that can be used.  For some batteries you can use 80 or 90% of their capacity but others only allow you to use 30%. It is very important to understand this when you are looking at the output of any battery.

You can have a range of batteries, all having 10 KW capacity but if one battery has a DOD of 80% where you would actually have 8KW of available storage another one might have a DOD of only 30% which means you would in fact only be able to use 3KW of storage. This means the lower the depth of discharge the more batteries you would need to achieve the same storage capacity.

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The FIAMM SoNick battery on display at Ian Southall’s Renewable Energy Demonstration trailer

One of the places you can sometimes see the FIAMM SoNick battery on display is at Ian Southall’s Renewable Energy SoNick-battery-displayDemonstration trailer.

The  REDT travels around Gippsland in Victoria to various festivals and other venues, including schools, to educate people about renewable energies,  including school  children, with specially designed school programs.

The Renewable Energy Demonstration trailer (REDT) is integrated with up-to-date technology which allows combinations of stand- alone, off-grid and energy storage options to drive a computer modelling system. This then promotes programs and teachings on sustainability and energy efficiencies to be displayed on the interactive screens installed in the trailer. You can “Boil the Billy” from solar PV, “Fan yourself” with power from the wind turbine, or “Light your Life” with LEDs using a bicycle to provide power. The Renewable Energy Demonstration trailer can store enough energy in the deep cell batteries “ON BOARD” – enough to power a house over night or even operate an event site during the day.

The Renewable Energy Demonstration trailer (REDT) is now promoting the FIAMM SoNick battery technology as the premium battery now available on the Australian market and when possible has an actual battery on display to encourage community engagement with this battery technology.

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