Sizing a Battery Charging Systems (BCS)

Electricity demand

When sizing a BCS it is important to consider the electricity demand of possible customers. On the individual scale (demand of a family) electricity demand in a newly electrified area can be estimated to lie at about 50 to 200 Wh/d if a flourescent light and a small radio with tape recorder is used. A commonly available 12 V battery of a useful capacity of 80 Ah has a stored energy of 960Wh. Depending on consumption it must be recharged every 5 to 20 days. This lies in the required range for acceptance of the technology by the consumers.

Thus, the generation facilities for running a BSC should be sized in order to meet these minimum demands (that is about 200 Wh/d x targeted customer base).

Modular BCS

Principally, BCS can easily be operated in a modular way, implying that adding more batteries to the charging stations as demand grows is possible as long as electricity generation is sufficient. This procedure seems reasonable as it allows starting with small systems (pilot projects) that can be incrementally increased once the project is succesful.

Batteries should be recharged in parallel.