ABSTRACT
The European Solar Test Installation (ESTI) is involved in EU projects to increase the quality and reliability of Solar Home Systems (SHS's), Beside efforts to define standard procedures for performance tests of SHS's under indoor and outdoor conditions, a battery test facility for the conditioning and analysis of lead acid batteries is essential. As a service unit for SHS testing, it ensures homogeneous starting conditions for different batteries. Before and after the tests a detailed analysis of battery parameters, such as the dependence of capacity on discharge current and maximum capacity available as well as the internal resistance, allows one to observe subtle differences in battery performance. This report describes the design of the battery test facility and initial results.
