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What do you use for energy storage for dark hours?

• ricksunny 4y ago
  We avoid electrical energy storage currently. Couple of reasons: 1. Product has to be simple to be adopted effectively. Batteries or overhead tanks imply additional management overhead on the part of the farmer, and that management has to be instructed. Difficult to do in this market context. 2. Support - we’ve talked with customers of competitors who do feature a battery storage element, and they’ve complained about getting support when the battery was failing after some time. 3. Cost. We try to get customers onto the first rung of the income-generation ladder. Higher-income rungs can be achieved with incremental investment, and energy storage is a good example of this. 4. Agronomy: Water-logging plant roots consistently at night is no bueno: fungus, restricting nighttime gas transfer between the roots and soil. That said, the case for storing energy during dark hours can still be a good one, provided 1-4 are satisfied/mitigated. Early morning hours are an excellent interval to irrigate over, and the solar irradiance at those hours is often still too low to utilize the pump’s full delivery & depth (head) capability.