" I just bought 18 L16's . Now when talking amp hr's do you ad up all the batteries amp hr's or do you just take the amp hr's from one battery to get the amp,hr rating for your battery bank?"
It depends on your voltage how many amp hours that would be. An L16p is 360amps rated over 20 hours (each) but that is at 6 volts per battery. I have a few L16P batteries myself.
If you have a 12V system, then you need 2 batteries in series to make 12V and that is still 360 amps hours. BUT you have 9 sets of 2, so 360 times 9 equals 3240 amps over a 20 hour discharge rate.
If you are at 24V then you need 4 6 volt batteries still at 360amps for the set, and you have an odd number, 4 1/2 sets? Same thing with 48V, you need 8 6volts and still 360 amps but would have odd number, 2.25 sets.
Being as 18 batteries only works out even as a 12V set I am geussing of course you are planning to run a 12V system.
Anyway, you add up the batteries to make your voltage and the amp hours of one battery is what that set has, 360amps. Then you would take the number of sets you have at that voltage and add up the amps. This is series and parralel wiring.
As far as how many batteries people have, that's an ok question for curiousity but it does not mean anything really. It is how much power you can make and how much power you will be using that really matters and that will almost certainly not be the same as other people. Then the voltages used also makes a bit of a difference, 48V system vs 12V system etc...
Another thought do you have random winds where you charge alot on the weekends but not much durring the week? (said strangly but you get the meaning I hope) You would need more batteries to store weekend power for weekday use compared to a person that gets the same average winds each day.
The basic rule of thumb is to store enough power for 3 days of non-power production.
That is totally dependant on what you will use yourself.
I have alot of batteries for different uses. I was keeping one house off grid but no longer rent that one. I geuss I was running around 800-1,000 amps there total between various banks in use. But then again that really means very little. Sometimes it was just a few CFL lights, TV, VCR, DVD, fans all at one time for a few hours. CFl lights
many hours, fans all night long. Sometimes I used my lathe or milling machine, coffee pot, micro wave, those are all high power items normally only used short periods of time though.
I never ran out of power but I could charge anytime elsewhere. Too bad owners were dinks, was a great site for a wind genny there.
