PES met up with Stacey Delzeit, Sr Applications Engineer at Trojan, which as you know is a world-famous name in batteries. Despite making batteries for almost 100 years, R&D continues to produce new, exciting and innovative products, which provide great flexibility to the end user. There are still more markets to conquer and they relish the challenge.
PES: Hi Stacey, we’ve been working with Trojan Battery for a good few years now so it’s great to welcome you to PES Solar/PV. As always, we have new readers, so could you give us a brief overview of the company to bring them up to date?
Stacey Delzeit: Trojan has been making lead-acid batteries in the US since 1925. Our maroon batteries have become synonymous with quality, durability, and long life. We offer flooded, AGM and GEL lead-acid deep-cycle batteries. Recently, we added lithium-ion batteries to our list of products.
PES: What is your experience in the solar/PV industry and is this a significant part of your business?
SD: People have been using Trojan’s deep-cycle batteries in solar applications for many years. Our standard ‘golf’ and ‘floor cleaning’ batteries were often used in solar applications because of their high quality. So, several years ago we decided it made sense to formulate and develop a product line specifically engineered for Solar applications. In many PV systems, the batteries are not recharged each day, so our solar products contain Smart Carbon™ which helps the batteries perform better under harsher conditions.
PES: So Trojan Battery has been manufacturing batteries for over 90 years, what are the trends that are driving technology in energy storage?
SD: Traditional flooded lead-acid batteries require periodic maintenance in the form of watering. This is a process that many customers would like to minimize or even eliminate. We have developed single point watering systems (SPWS), which can be added to most of our flooded products. This makes watering flooded batteries much easier.
With an SPWS, the overall watering time is reduced, there is no need to remove the battery caps and the correct amount of water is always added. To reduce maintenance requirements even further, flooded batteries can be replaced with Absorbed Glass Mat (AGM), GEL and lithium-ion batteries. These are sealed batteries and do not require watering.
