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ziq wrote (edited )

Just emptied my bank account and loaned money from my dad to buy batteries for my solar system, my last set of batteries only lasted 4.2 years. This time I'm getting a name brand in the hopes they'll last longer, because disposing of toxic batteries every few years makes captain planet wince.

In other news, I found cans of tomato paste for just 65 cents each and stocked up for the rest of the month. I want to start stocking up on canned goods for the future whenever I find them on deep discount.

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

In my limited experience, batteries are a huge problem for people relying on solar power.

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ziq wrote

The ones I'm going with are supposed to last 8+ years. But heat can drastically shorten the lifetime of batteries, and I've got a lot of that.

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Green_Razor wrote

You might want to consider getting broken and old laptops and using the batteries from those. Its more work and I'm not sure how long they would last, but since usually even dead laptop batteries only have one or two dead cells it would probably be cheaper.

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ziq wrote

Every used laptop I've ever used has lasted 20 minutes on a charge, tops. There's also no way to wire them to an inverter afaik.

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