The post Thinking About Planting a Garden? Here Are 7 Tips to Help You Get the Most of It appeared first on Sean McCarthy.

I have zero complaints.

(11/10/25) Quick note – If you use my referral link below, we both receive a credit for one month of free service once you activate your Starlink, currently a $120 (USD) value. Note that I am not an official representative of Starlink in any capacity. I received the code a couple of days ago in a standard customer promotion email from them. Starlink is offering $0 upfront hardware costs and free professional setup for new customers in select areas. Here’s that code:

https://www.starlink.com/residential?referral=RC-556275-33207-12

I ordered Starlink satellite internet service in February of 2021 and waited almost a full year for it to show up.

Due to where my family lives in rural Vermont, we have no other alternatives for internet service outside of satellite internet. There’s clearly a disconnect between the FCC statistics on broadband connectivity and the actual reality of living in the green mountain state.

Over the past 20 years, we’ve had multiple versions of offerings from both Hughesnet and Viasat. For a while, I even used hotspot devices from Verizon Wireless.

And then…Starlink, a match made in heaven, or at least, the sky.

The others

I’ve worked from home for the last 13 years as a tech consultant and freelancer. Solid internet service has been my lifeline.

Our first HughesNet dish 20 years ago was whatever their home plan was with a basic dish. I quickly upgraded to a business account which required spending over a thousand US dollars on the equipment. A few years later, I heard about Viasat. I went through the same upgrade process with them.

I won’t even go into what it’s like to deal with frustrated installers that show up in the afternoon only to still be trying 5 or 6 hours later to get things synced up and registered with each respective company’s satellite. It usually ended with an angry technician and less-than-stellar connectivity upon their departure.

Between the hardware and having to keep up with their data cap overages, our internet bill monthly ran around $400 (USD) monthly.

Yes, you read that correctly. We were paying nearly $5,000 (US) per year for access to the Internet.

Enter Starlink

The online ordering process to get on the waiting list was simple. Log in, create an account, enter my credit card info for the $99 reservation fee, and wait.

I had seen YouTube videos of other people unboxing their Starlink dishes. Many of them lived within the same general geographic coordinates as our home address. This kept me hopeful that my order would ship sooner than later.

I was even more excited about the fact that I would be able to install the system myself, completely foregoing the inevitably hostile installation technician.

The initial arrival estimate of my all-inclusive box of web access was the end of the summer of 2022.

Summer ended, no box.

A few months later, I received an email that it should be shipping soon and to keep an eye on my account for actual dates. Two months after that, the shipment notification was in my email.

The installation

On the day that the surprisingly small, gray box showed up on my porch in January, the temperatures were hovering well below zero degrees Fahrenheit.

I immediately texted a friend who had also signed up for the service but had yet to receive his.

It was brutally cold, but I was determined to get this thing up and running. I’d waited long enough and my current max Viasat download speed of right around 22mbps on the best day had me well prepared for this transition.

A quick slice through some packing tape and voila! There it was…packed in all its glory; a small rectangular satellite dish, a quad-pod mount, the wifi router, and 75 feet of cable. I also ordered the optional sidewall mount.

I’d already downloaded the app to my iPhone months ago and figured out where this tiny beast was going to be installed. The app made it extremely easy to determine what may or may not obstruct service.

I bundled myself up, leaned an extension ladder against the chosen exterior gable wall location, and went to work. There are trees around our property and I knew that getting the dish as high as possible was important so that they wouldn’t obstruct the signal.

Since I was getting rid of the current provider, I used the same hole through the wall for the Starlink cable to connect the dish outside with the router that would be placed inside the house.

Regarding the installation, there are only five parts to the system; the dish itself, the cable that goes between the dish and router, the router, the power cable, and whatever you choose for a mounting option whether it’s the included quad-pod or a different mount.

It’s important to ensure that the cable isn’t kinked or pulled too tightly around any corners. A relaxed cable routing is best. Be sure to use proper cable staples made for the cable so that it doesn’t get pinched. Any kinking, pinching, or extensive pulling of the cable can either reduce the speed of the system or cause it to not work at all.

Be sure to place the router in a central location avoiding as many interfering objects as possible. Keep in mind that the included cable is 75 feet long and plan the placement of the dish and router accordingly.

It’s also important to either plug the power cable into either a surge protector or power conditioner. This will help protect the system in the event of an outage. A further suggestion would be to connect it to a UPS battery backup unit. In the event of a power outage, your Starlink system will still be functional for as long a time as the UPS unit is rated.

One feature of the system is that the dish heats itself up based on the outside temperature so that snow and ice don’t build up on it. Where both of those are a thing where we live, this is a pretty big deal.

Once the dish was mounted and the cable connected, all that was left was to plug it in.

After a few seconds, the dish began to turn and move itself to properly align with the satellites. A minute or two later, the system showed online in the app.

Note that there are newer versions of the dish and the most current model seems even simpler to install.

The speed

I took the following screenshot of a speed test the morning after I installed Starlink. The temperature was -25 degrees Fahrenheit. Yes, that’s minus 25 degrees.

More recently, we experienced windchills of -50°F this past February. We live about 35 miles from Mount Washington, which set a new windchill record for the United States of 108 degrees below zero that same weekend.

It was pretty cold at our house, and Starlink never missed a beat.

This is a pretty big deal because the system specifications state operating temperatures of 30°C to 50°C (-22°F to 122°F).

On average, our download speeds range from 150–300 Mbps with upload speeds of 9–22 Mbps. The latency, referred to as ping in the screenshot above, or the round trip data time between the user and the destination site, seems to average in the vicinity of 20-35 milliseconds. (Latency milliseconds updated on 3/3/25. It was initially around 35 milliseconds, but more recent speed tests show as low as 19 milliseconds.)

Compared to our previous satellite provider options and witnessing first-hand latency of well over 600 milliseconds daily, this is a big deal.

If you’ve had satellite internet and ever clicked and waited for a page to load on a regular basis, or had your bank login timeout and didn’t understand why, latency was quite possibly the culprit.

As a technology consultant, I’m extremely well-versed in all things network. Whether it has a cable or not, everything has a transmit and receive speed and a latency factor.

For comparison, the following chart shows good latency for gaming:

Our Starlink latency falls more often than not within what is considered “good” for gaming.

WiFi Calling

In addition to good gaming latency, it appears that Starlink latency is also good for WiFi calling.

Along with living in a location where internet options are limited, cellular service also requires overcoming obstacles.

If the wind is just right and I stand outside a particular kitchen window, I can make a call. Because of this, I installed a cellular repeater in our house.

There are a few factors to consider in getting optimal results from a cell phone repeater. I’ll simply say that the working range of ours is very limited to a select area inside the house.

With previous satellite internet installations, we could make and receive calls over WiFi, but the latency made having an actual conversation almost impossible. The delay between when someone spoke and the other person heard it caused people to talk over each other along with breaks in the speech.

Having Starlink has completely changed that.

We now make and receive all of our calls over WiFi and no one on the other end is the wiser. The calls are clear and there’s no delay in the conversation. If we don’t mention it to whoever we’re talking to, they have no clue.

I also have regular video Zoom or Teams calls on my laptop with no issues.

Television streaming services

We’ve always had Dish Network for television service. As our kids grew up, Netflix became more and more of a thing, as did it using up our bandwidth in the first 10 days of the new internet service month. This quickly contributed to our $5k annual internet budget.

Starlink sent an email this past year to customers regarding its Fair Use Policy.

The email stated the following:

Customers who exceed 1 TB of data use on a monthly basis (currently < 10% of users) will automatically be switched to Basic Access for the remainder of the billing cycle, which means their data usage will be deprioritized during times of network congestion, resulting in slower speeds.

We had recently started using Netflix more often and had plans to completely cut the cord. In our case, that meant cutting the cordless cord as we had satellite television service as well. This new data cap at first concerned me, until I started to periodically take a look at our data usage.

With 3 iPhones, a couple of laptops, an Amazon Firestick, light Xbox usage and updates, whatever Dish Network updates occur along with all of our phone and video calls, we cap out at right around 400–500GB monthly.

That’s less than half of what the Fair Use Policy email warned us about.

We’ll be cutting the extra expense of satellite television without being concerned about data usage.

Are there ever any glitches or outages with Starlink?

Sure. Although, my experience is that they don’t happen often and anything over a few seconds is rare. Also, these outages almost always go unnoticed under normal internet usage. The app on my phone shows me every one of them whether it lasts two seconds or two minutes.

For the very few times in well over a year of service where a network issue has lasted a few minutes, it’s just that- a few minutes. It has never prompted me to contact customer service or required any more intervention than a quick reboot of the router or simply waiting for it to clear itself.

If you were able, you would also find that your current internet service provider has regular outages that go unnoticed by you as well.

Regarding Starlink’s customer service, I’ve come across posts where some customers have said that it’s less than stellar. I personally can’t attest to that or how good it might be as I’ve never once had to contact them in 15 months with the service.

Is it worth it?

From my experience, if you live in either a rural area where you find yourself plagued with slow speeds and data caps or someplace where your internet speed is less than stellar, it’s a resounding yes.

As of 11/24/24, their website, pricing shows $349 $499 for the Starlink Kit at some locations and residential pricing of $120 per month.

The following also appears on their website: Try Starlink for 30 days and if not satisfied, get a full refund.

There is currently no contract to sign and you can cancel the service at any time. You keep the equipment and that cost isn’t refundable, but be sure to refer back to the 30 day trial currently being offered.

The installation is actually rather simple. It really depends on your property and what obstacles exist. Many people are able to place it on their deck or on their lawn using one of the mounts available from Starlink. The key is having a clear view of the northern sky.

Portable and RV options are also now available for a small increase in the monthly service fee for those who wish to either use the system in multiple locations or while traveling.

It’s important to note at this time that Starlink isn’t currently available everywhere. You can order the service, get on the waitlist, or check availability on their website.

Conclusion and my final thoughts

On a planet with 5.1 billion internet users, it may be difficult for many to understand how Starlink has been life-changing for us.

No one in my family are strangers to lightning-fast internet. We have access to it everywhere we go, we just haven’t had access to it in our own household.

Thanks to Starlink, now we do.

*UPDATE: 6/19/23*

Still no issues or complaints. Since canceling our Dish Network account for television on 5/1/23 and  streaming all television services over Starlink (Netflix, Hulu, Paramount+, etc.), below is our all-inclusive data usage for one month. This includes television streaming, internet usage including working from home daily, wifi-calling, and light gaming.

*UPDATE: 10/11/23*

It’s been over a year and a half and we still have had the same positive experience. Our usage normally remains around 500GB +/- per month. The month of September was our heaviest usage and it seems that the bump was over the Labor Day holiday weekend.

Our neighbors who live down the road from us own an Airbnb that they also use themselves for a couple of months throughout the year. They were previously using HughesNet, but because of the poor internet speeds and latency, they weren’t able to come up to the mountains as often as they’d like while working remotely. They asked what we used for internet.

Last month, I installed their Starlink system for them. It’s been a complete game-changer for them and their guests.

Here’s that referral code again if you’d like to get a free month of service: https://www.starlink.com/?referral=RC-556275-33207-12

The post Starlink Review: My Experience After One Year of Service appeared first on Sean McCarthy.

If you’ve never actually been to a therapist to help deal with stress or other life-related crap, chances are you’ve heard that they exist, both the therapist and the life-related crap.

No? Well, then you must have at least heard this one…

A therapist walks into a bar and the bartender says, “Am I being replaced?”

Whether we admit it or not, we’ve all gone through stuff in our lives. Not properly dealing with it can cause even more stuff in our lives.

“Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a psychotherapy that enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress that are the result of disturbing life experiences,” that’s straight from emdr.com,

Nope, I don’t like it either. I just read psycho and therapy in the same sentence. Fine, slightly out of context, but it still requires an admission of sorts. My life’s had some ups and downs, and I wanted to address the downs that were weighing me down.

If my experience and explanation below help to point you in the direction of finding some inner peace and a bit of a better life, then admitting that I’ve dealt with my share of stuff, too, is well worth it.

A nickel for your thoughts

Personally, talking to complete strangers about my deepest, darkest secrets or traumatic experiences never sounded much of a good time. The first thing they tell you in session number one is that “this is a safe place and anything we discuss here is completely confidential.”

Mmhmm.

Me? Trust issues? Nah.

Still, over the years, I’d had a couple of sessions with therapists to try to figure out the best course of action for allowing more rays of sunshine to beam into my social media seeming life. You know, when on the outside, you show everyone the best side of you even if that side is complete BS and actually in no way reflects who you are or how you’re actually feeling?

Yeah, that was me, except for the fact that if you used to follow me on social media, we’d never actually go anywhere because I never posted much. I didn’t want to brag about the walks with my dog or the days that I didn’t feel like walking with my dog.

The problem with my previous therapeutic stints was that with the first, it took me all of 10 minutes to realize that I was the smartest person in the room. She was a very sweet lady, but she couldn’t keep up and I quickly noticed her looking down at what seemed like a two-thousand-page book in her lap as she sat behind her desk every time I answered a question. The book was as big as she was and I didn’t have time for her to go find the pages about me when Google existed and I could just stay home and figure it out for free.

The second one got me- quickly. Sure, she had to use a proverbial can opener to get me to elaborate more on certain things that I mentioned in our right-around lunchtime sessions. Still, I enjoyed the conversations, and if nothing else, it was a bit of mental fresh air to feel comfortable enough to at least consider trying to make this work.

I had initially chosen the timing of our meetings in hopes that if it wasn’t working out and she heard my stomach growling, she’d excuse me early and let me get something to eat. This would prevent me from further having to expose myself, mentally speaking. Apparently, therapists have a name for this tactic, but she left the practice before I had a chance to find out what it was, also leaving me cold and hungry to fend for myself.

I’d had enough at that point. I just couldn’t muster up the energy to meet with someone new and have another verbal sparring session to determine who got to sit behind the desk and who actually belonged on the couch.

Back to my dog walks it was.

I had no idea

A friend of mine had recommended EMDR after he said it literally saved his life in just a small amount of sessions.

I’d known him for decades and he never seemed like the type to be anything but pretty happy with life. It turns out, he was. He’d just dealt with being pretty sick and even after physically getting better, he went through a patch where he felt suicidal.

Never having feelings like this of any sort in his life up until this point, he spoke to his wife about it. He didn’t want to take any medications and after talking to a few close friends, this type of therapy was suggested as it was said to provide much faster results than standard talk therapy.

He and I were catching up on the phone and he’d given me the quick recap of the past couple of months where he’d gone from dire mental straights to back to being his happy self with what seemed to almost be a too-good-to-be-true story. He credits his EMDR therapist completely for saving his life.

His ordeal marinated in my brain for the next few months. The thought of medication for feeling down more days than I thought was normal wasn’t my idea of a good time. I second-guess myself when I have a headache and reach for an aspirin wondering if I really need it.

EMDR doesn’t require oversharing

When I spoke to the therapist initially on the phone, she was quick to tell me that there was no guarantee that it would work. She also mentioned that after changing to nothing but this type of therapy two years prior, it had been successful for one hundred percent of her clients. I was up for the gamble and booked a session.

Have you ever been in the middle of something and out of nowhere, it stirs up a memory? Sometimes the connection is obvious. Other times, the memory is so far from what you’re currently doing that you find yourself daydreaming.

Now, picture that memory as a two-foot-long piece of string. Yes, I know, stick with me here.

Imagine yourself holding that piece of string directly out in front of you, one end in the right hand, the other in the left. Now, let it fall to the ground. If one end of the string was the beginning of the memory and the other the end, you could very easily see where it starts and stops.

Continue doing this with every memory that you’ve ever had, each as a piece of string, each falling to the ground on top of the rest until there are hundreds of them.

Now, look down.

Can you still see where the first one begins and ends? Are you able to see where any of them begin and end, or, which other specific strings they seem to touch in some way? Chances are, aside from a few, you can’t.

Imagine again that these strings, or memories, are events in your life that your brain never completely processed. Most seem irrelevant and quite possibly are things, events, or people that you haven’t thought about in years or even decades. Still, somehow, they’re connected. Not all of them, but each string, or event, that comes into contact with another, is connected in some way. We just don’t know how, or even why.

A simple example

Paraphrasing a bit, EMDR helps a person alleviate particular stress that seems to be caused by traumatic events.

For example, if you’ve always been a dog lover and one day on your walk home from school or work you were attacked and bitten by a dog, that traumatic event may cause you to now fear all dogs. EMDR has the potential to fix this. You won’t forget the event that happened, but it will no longer cause you to be fearful of dogs.

You can insert your fear of choice here as we continue. It could be anything from a vivid event that’s happened to you, a place or person that makes you uncomfortable, a fear of heights, or anything of the sort. This is your life. If something is causing a traumatic response inside of you, that’s your thing.

In my experience, the memory of what was causing the stress or fear rarely, if ever, comes to mind once the processing has been done.

A session is normally considered to be approximately one hour of this therapy. Depending on the extent of the trauma, anywhere from a few sessions to a dozen or so may be needed. This is completely dependent on the event, the individual, and how well they take to the stimulation.

Side note; I wasn’t bitten by a dog.

How it works

EMDR is nothing like Talk Therapy. The therapist only needs to know what is currently happening to find a starting point for reprocessing. Yes, you heard correctly, what is currently happening. Unlike traditional client/therapist sessions where you may be asked about your childhood or how you were treated in school, EMDR therapy starts with what’s happening now and works backward.

After discussing the basic issue and how it affects you, you’ll be asked to focus on each of those things as your eyes follow a light at a speed determined by the therapist. This isn’t like trying to trick your cat with a laser pointer, these people are actually trained in this, and there’s a science to it.

Other bilateral stimulation methods may also be used such as each hand holding a vibration device, but the goal is to stimulate the left and right brain by purposely pulling your attention to the left and right very deliberately, yet fluently with a specific rhythm. As this begins, you bring the thought to mind as well as how it makes you feel.

What happens next, is perhaps the magic and genius of it all.

I should take a moment to stop here and explain that what goes along with what is about to occur during this process seems very much related to one’s personality.

If the client being treated is someone who is normally very emotional, a river of tears may start flowing. If the person is normally very strong and emotions don’t normally get the best of them, they could simply go through this process unscathed. However, take it from me who leans toward the latter, heartstrings will be tugged on regardless. There are some memories that we just aren’t prepared for, good, or bad.

As the light or bilateral stimulation is being done and you’ve brought that thought to mind and how it makes you feel, you do nothing.

That’s the wonder of this. You do absolutely nothing, aside from following the light with your eyes.

As long as the therapist has chosen the correct starting point, your mind will begin to almost wander, but in a way that takes you down a lane of memories that may at first seem connected, followed by some that you may not see any correlation to your initial thought at all. As I mentioned earlier, some of the memories may have not ever crossed your mind before and you aren’t quite sure what they have to do with this. Some of my memories during the process went from quick flashes of a person or place to a specific moment in time, seemingly staying there to get all of the details of a few moments 35 years prior.

Why “these” memories?

At some point, they weren’t properly taken care of by your brain. It’s quite possible that most of them never needed to be right up until that one event occurred that happened to be tied to them. It’s then that those that seemed unimportant became valuable to resolving the issue.

Remember the strings that you dropped on the ground and couldn’t find the ends or identify what other strings they were touching? Through the process of EMDR, we don’t know what memories are tied in together or “touching” until we start to follow one end of the string. Some may only come in contact with a few others, while some may be attached to a dozen or more. Additionally, some of the memories may be short and simple, with others being more drawn out. Some of these thoughts may not affect the person at all in the process, while others may be so far forgotten but so impactful that they create an emotion of extreme sadness, happiness, or anything in between.

The good news is that once this reprocessing is completed, you no longer are affected by what was causing your reaction. The trauma has been mitigated, for good.

One caveat, while dealing with a major traumatic event will almost feel like a heavy weight has been lifted within the next twenty-four hours, it may leave space for other smaller events to come to the surface that will now also need to be addressed through additional EMDR sessions.

Fixed

I no longer struggle with the things that were weighing me down in my everyday life. EMDR has allowed me to focus more on what’s happening now versus things that happened in my past or future worries that I had.

Life still sneaks in some unexpected twists and turns that need to be dealt with. With no longer being affected by things that were completely preventing the ability to do so prior, the day-to-day stuff is more manageable. I also now look forward to walking my dog each day.

I equate the success of EMDR therapy in my life a bit to getting out of the stress of financial debt and coming into some money. You still have problems to deal with, you just don’t have any money problems.

The post EMDR: A Better Therapy? appeared first on Sean McCarthy.

Standard solar controllers vs. solar boost controllers

Standard solar controllers regulate the flow of electricity from solar panels to a battery bank. They protect the battery bank from being over or undercharged and are an essential part of any off-grid solar system.

Solar boost controllers not only perform the same safety tasks for battery banks as standard solar controllers, but they go a step further. 

Using maximum power point tracking (MPPT) technology, solar boost controllers maximize the amount of power available from solar panels. By adjusting the voltage and current of the solar panel, the controller ensures that it is always operating at the point at which the panel is producing the most power. This is also known as the maximum power point (MPP).

Solar boost controller advantages

The advantages of using a solar boost controller include:

• Increased efficiency: A solar boost controller can increase the efficiency of your solar system by up to 30%. 
• Extended battery life: By preventing it from being overcharged or undercharged, a solar boost controller can help to extend the life of your battery bank. The controller does this by automatically shutting off the charging process when the battery is fully charged. The battery is also prevented from discharging below a certain level.
• Better charging in low light conditions: MPPT technology is more efficient at extracting power from solar panels in low light conditions. This means that a solar boost controller can improve the performance of your solar system on cloudy days.
• Increased safety: A solar boost controller also protects your system from short circuits.

Additional benefits:

• Electric bill savings for those with grid-tied systems. A solar boost controller can help you generate more power from your solar panels leading to lower energy bills.
• Increased solar system reliability. By protecting your solar system from damage caused by overcharging or undercharging, a solar boost controller can help to extend the lifespan of your system.
• Environmental advantages. Increased efficiency of your solar system by adding a solar boost controller can help you reduce your reliance on fossil fuels. In turn, reducing your carbon footprint.

Conclusion

A solar boost controller increases the efficiency of your solar power system by extending the life of the battery bank, improving charging performance in low light conditions, and increasing system safety. It should be an important consideration if you plan on installing a solar system on or off the grid.

The post Solar Boost Controllers: The Key to a More Efficient Solar System appeared first on Sean McCarthy.

Off-grid solar systems use solar panels to charge a bank of batteries that store power for consumption. A power inverter that converts the battery bank’s direct current (DC) to alternating current (AC) is also required for most lighting and appliances. 

These systems are ideal for homes and businesses that are not connected to the electrical grid.

With a number of battery types that can be used in an off-grid solar system, the best type for your system will depend on your specific needs and budget. Key factors to consider when choosing a battery include:

• Capacity: The capacity of a battery is measured in amp-hours (Ah). This is the amount of current that the battery can deliver for one hour. Determining the size of your battery bank will depend completely on your estimated daily energy consumption.
• Depth of discharge (DoD): The DoD is the percentage of the battery’s capacity that can be safely discharged without damage. Depending on the battery type, consistently discharging below the recommended percentage can greatly reduce the life of your battery bank.
• Cycle life: The cycle life of a battery is the number of times it can be fully discharged and recharged before it starts to lose capacity. Most batteries have an average cycle life of approximately 500 cycles.
• Solar panel output: It’s important to properly size the battery bank so that it correlates with the charging capability of the solar panels that will be installed.
• Days of autonomy: This equates to days without available sun to charge your battery bank. The bank storage will need to be sized properly to account for a certain number of days of autonomy. This is a significant consideration if you live in an area with long periods of cloudy weather. 
• Self-discharge rate: Each battery has a self-discharge rate. This is the amount of energy that a battery loses per day when it is not in use. Combined with the expected days of autonomy, this is an important consideration when choosing the proper battery for your system.
• Price: The cost of batteries can greatly vary. Although lead-acid batteries are the most affordable, they have the shortest cycle life. Lithium-ion batteries are the most expensive but have the longest cycle life.

After considering each of these factors, you can start to narrow down your choices. The following are some of the most popular types of batteries for off-grid solar systems:

• Lead-acid batteries: The most affordable option, lead-acid batteries are the most common type of battery used in off-grid solar systems. However, they have a short cycle life and a high self-discharge rate.
• AGM (absorbed glass mat) batteries: AGM batteries are a type of lead-acid battery that is more resistant to leaks and vibration than traditional lead-acid batteries. They have a longer cycle life and a lower self-discharge rate than traditional lead-acid batteries.
• Gel batteries: Gel batteries are another type of lead-acid battery that uses a gel electrolyte. This makes them even more resistant to leaks and vibration than traditional lead-acid batteries. Like AGM batteries, they also have a longer cycle life and a lower self-discharge rate than traditional lead-acid batteries.
• Lithium-ion batteries: Lithium-ion batteries are the longest-lasting, but most expensive type of battery used in off-grid solar systems. Along with the lowest self-discharge rate, they are also more lightweight and compact than lead-acid batteries.

Choosing the proper battery bank is one of the most important decisions for your off-grid solar system. Once you’ve considered your estimated power consumption and budget, the right battery bank for your system will provide years of reliable power.

The post Choosing the Best Battery Bank for Your Off-Grid Solar System appeared first on Sean McCarthy.