Buying batteries is quite a mess because there is no proper information about the battery performance and backup time is available on the net. Also, there are lots of options for batteries available on e-commerce site which make buying batteries online much more of a headache.
Even once I talk about 150Ah Battery with the owner of the batteries retailer shop. And whatever he said about the 150Ah battery was almost wrong, it looks like he never goes through the manual of the battery.
In this blog, I will give you a brief introduction to the 150Ah battery and backup time for different classes (C10 and C20) and different loads.
Before jumping into each and the details, you need to know about the 150Ah battery, here is short a note on the 150Ah battery.
What means by a 150Ah battery?.
150Ah is mean that battery is guaranteed to provide a continuous current of 15 Ampere over the discharge period of 10 hours (that is, 15A x 10h =150Ah) if the battery is of Class C10 and if it is of Class C20 it will provide a continuous current of 7.5 Ampere over the discharge period of 20 hours (that is, 7.5A x 20h =150Ah).
Content table
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Definition of a 150Ah battery
Generally, there are only two details you will find on the sticker of the battery other than the warranty, that is the battery voltage (‘V’) and battery rating (in ‘Ah’).
Where Ah or Ampere/hour capacity is current a battery can provide over a specified period of time to a specific End of discharge Voltage at a specific temperature. Whereas End of discharge Voltage is the level to which the cell voltage is allowed to fall to before affecting the load.
The voltage battery provides before it fails is called End of discharge Voltage.
As the battery starts discharging, the voltage across its terminals starts reducing too but the rate of voltage drop throughout the discharging period is not too much high.
Also, the battery voltage is the nominal voltage across battery terminals. Generally, the battery voltage for a 150Ah battery is 12V or 24V.
A 12V, 150Ah battery is the most common battery available in the market over the globe and it is made of 6 numbers 2 V cells with End of discharge Voltage per cell is varied from 1.75 V to 1.8 V. Hence the End of discharge voltage for 12V battery varies from 10.5V (1.75V x 6) to 10.8V (1.8V x 6).
Lead acid cells generally produce an electrical potential of 2V while Nickel-cadmium cells generally produce an electrical potential of 1.2V
If you try to find the details of “End of discharge Voltage” for the battery on its sticker, you won’t find the same. To get the same you need to ask for the battery specification from the battery retailer or you can download the same from the manufacturer’s website.
Following is an example of battery specification I found on the internet, you may find a completely different format of specification because there is no such standard for the same.
As per the above specification of battery, the capacity of the battery is defined as 150Ah at a 10-hour rate to EOD of 1.8V per cell at 25 Degree Celsius. As you can see, the number of cells is also defined in the above specification, which is ‘6’.
This means that this 12V, 150Ah battery is guaranteed to provide a continuous current of 15A over the completely discharge period of 10 hours (that is 15 Ampere x 10 Hour=150 Ah) and the end of discharge voltage of the battery will be 10.8V (6 x 1.8V per cell) at 25 Degree Celsius.
150Ah Batteries are available in AGM, GEL and WET/Flooded construction. Click here to learn more.
150Ah to Watt
Watt is the unit of power and the amount of power stored in a battery is equal to the multiple of its Voltage and Ampere- hours, hence 12 volts 150Ah battery is equal to 1800 watts (12x150), 24 volts 150 ah battery is equal to 3600 Watt (24 x 150) and a 48 volts 150 Ah battery is equal to 7200 Watt (48 x 150).
150Ah to mAh
Batteries for home inverters and UPS are rated in Ampere Hours, whereas for mobiles the same is rated in Milliampere hour. Basically, one Ampere hour is equal to 1000 Milliampere Hour, hence 150Ah is equal to 150,000 [150x1000] mAh.
Must read post: best 150Ah battery
Difference between C10 and C20 150 Ah Battery
If you search over the internet about 150Ah battery sometimes you will find that capacity of the battery is mentioned as 150Ah at a rate of C10. Where ‘C10’ refers to the guaranteed performance of the battery for 10-hour.
Similarly, the ‘C20’ battery, the battery is guaranteed performance of 20-hour.
To find the guaranteed discharge current of C10 batteries, you need to divide the Ampere-Hour of the battery by 10. Similarly for C20, for the battery, you need to divide the Ampere-hour of the battery by 20.
But the Ampere-hour of the battery will remain the same in both cases, that is for the 150Ah Class C10 battery, the battery is guaranteed to deliver a continuous current of 15A for 10 hours. Hence the Ampere-Hour of C10 will be equal to 15A x 10H = 150Ah.
Also for the 150Ah Class C20 battery, the battery is guaranteed to deliver a continuous current of 7.5A for 20 hours. Hence the Ampere-Hour of C20 will be equal to 7.5A x 20H = 150Ah.
But if we compare the discharge ampere of C10 150Ah and C20 150Ah battery for a discharge period of 10 Hours we will find that 150Ah C10 battery can deliver 15A of continuous current which is slightly higher than 13.28A of 150Ah C20.
Also, a 150Ah C10 battery can deliver 8.11A of current over the discharge period of 20 Hours which is still higher than the 7.46A of a 50Ah C20 battery.
Table-1
Table-1 shows the difference between the discharge current of 150Ah C10 and 150Ah C20 batteries with identical EODV (End of Discharge Voltage)
This difference in discharge current for the same period impacts the performance of the battery, like backup time, peak current and battery life.
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Difference between a 12V 150Ah battery and a 24V 150Ah battery
There is two main difference between a 12V 150Ah battery and a 24V 150AH battery. First is the voltage across their terminal (that is 12V and 24V) and the Second is the power stored in them (that is 1800Watt for 12V 150Ah and 3600 Watt for 24V).
In electricity, the formula of power is, Power = Voltage x current
Hence the amount of power stored in a 24V, 150Ah battery will be 24V x 150 Ah = 3600 Watt-hour (3.6kWh).
And the amount of power stored in a 12V, 150Ah battery will be 12V x 150Ah = 1800Watt-hour (1.8kWh).
Refer to the below table for a better understanding of the comparison between the power store in 12V 150AH and 24V, 150 Ah batteries.
This means that for a similar load 24V, 150Ah battery will give twice the backup time as compared to 12V, 150Ah. And for similar backup time 24V, 150Ah battery can run twice the load as compared to 12V, 150Ah.
This makes the 24V battery a clear winner, but before jumping to a conclusion that a 24V battery is better than 12V after a comparison of price and power stored in them. You need to understand that to charge as well as for extracting power from a 24V battery you will also need a 24V inverter. And the price of a 24V inverter is higher than that of a 12V.
Also, you cant charge a 24V battery from a 12V inverter, but you can charge two 12V batteries (after connecting them in series) from a 24V inverter.
There are other reasons like availability of 24V battery as well as 24V inverter is very low as compare of 12V battery and inverter for most of the countries. Making going with a 24V battery instead of a 12V battery could be a bad decision.
So, you should the availability of a 24V inverter before buying the 24V battery.
How long will a 150 ah battery last?
The backup time of the 150Ah battery depends upon the discharge rate of the battery. This means the faster your discharge battery the less backup time you will get.
This also means that the backup time of the 12V, 150Ah C10 battery will be different from the C20 battery.
Let us compare the backup time of the 150Ah C10 and 150Ah C20 battery
Backup Time for C10 battery:
Refer below table you can see the discharge rate of 12V, 150Ah at a 10-hour rate to EOD of 1.8V per cell at 25 Degree Celsius
Table#2
From the above table, you can see that 12V, 150AH C10 (at a 10Hour rate) gives only 97.98Ax1Hour= 97.98Ah (that is, it can withstand 1139.16 Watt of Power for a continuously one Hour) if you completely discharge it within 1-hours.
But if you completely discharge it in 20 Hours C10, 150Ah battery will give 8.11Ax20Hours = 162.2Ah (that is, it can withstand 97.8 Watt of Power continuously for 20 Hours)
Due to the efficiency of the inverter (which is 90% to 95% for a high-end sine wave inverter) the AC output power will be 5% to 10% lesser than the battery output.
Also discharging the battery below 50% again and again will damage the battery life. That's why to get the high life of battery 150Ah, C10. It should not be loaded more than 622.4Watt for more than 1 Hour.
Backup Time for C20 battery:
Refer below table you can see the discharge rate of 12V, 150Ah at a 20-hour rate to EOD of 1.8V per cell at 25 Degree Celsius
From the above table, you can see that 12, 150AH C20 (at a 10 Hour rate) gives 89.29Ax1Hour = 89.29Ah (that is, it can withstand 1024 Watt of Power continuously for 1 Hour) if you completely discharge it within 1-hours.
But if you completely discharge it in 20 Hours battery will give 7.46Ax20Hours = 149.2Ah (that is, it can withstand 90 Watt of Power continuously for 20 Hours)
Also, discharging the battery below 50% again and again will damage the battery life. That's why to get the high life of battery 150Ah, C20. It should not be loaded more than 559.4 Watt for more than 1 Hour.
Comparison between the backup time of 150Ah C10 and 150Ah C20 Battery
Refer to the below table, which shows the comparison between backup time for C10 and C20 batteries of the same Ampere hour (150Ah), End of Discharge Voltage (1.8V) and terminal voltage (12V).
From the above table, it is clear that C10 batteries provide much more backup time than C20 batteries. And that's the reason why C10 batteries are preferable to C20 batteries, especially for off-grid solar power plants.
In off-grid solar power plants, you have only 5 to 7 hours of sunshine to charge your batteries and the remaining 17 to 19 hours of power will be provided by batteries.
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