“Dry” Battery Storage

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Searunner, click on the "Massachusetts Institute of Technology" in my post. It will link you to an article.
You can also go HERE for a link to the spin-off business.
Thanks - those two links led me down the rabbit hole for the better part of last night and while absolutely fascinating I am like Viking and will stick with the lead acid type for the foreseeable future
 
So far the batteries that I've been getting at Costco have been of very high quality and the price has been within reason, presently their batteries are supplied by Interstate and both the auto batteries and golf cart batteries have given us exceptional service.
 
So far the batteries that I've been getting at Costco have been of very high quality and the price has been within reason, presently their batteries are supplied by Interstate and both the auto batteries and golf cart batteries have given us exceptional service.
Back when I was working (up to 2 years ago) we had used nothing but Interstate batteries for 2 decades. Before that, it would only take us a few months to find out what batteries were crap (like the ones the factory installed)
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Customers could easily lose 10X the cost of the battery with down-time.
They just wanted something dependable and were not interested in pinching pennies.
Interstate saved us many
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.
Just ask @phideaux if they are any good.
P.S. Trojan makes a good condom, but not much else :rolleyes:.
 
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I've got 8 battery bank of 232ah batteries that are over 10 years old and still percolating just fine.

Just gotta give em proper care .

Think I remember driving to Bama to get 4 of em , several years ago, Still percolating good.

Keep distilled water level good. Keep battery minder on them in banks of 2 ( solar charge with no grid), load test every 6 months, let them rest for 2 weeks at least 3 times a year. Keep connections/terminals coated and clean.

I plan on another 10 years.

Jim
 
Battery life has two components.
1. Available amps
2. amp/hours
Lead acid batteries should never sit more than 12 hours in a state of discharge and they should never be discharged to less than 20% of charge capacity. (80% discharge) Life is considerably longer if the battery is only discharged 50%
They should be run at close to that 50% before they are recharged to prevent "plate memory" but if you don't charge the battery for 12 hours permanent sulfation begins and your battery loses capacity. Never expose the plates to air, keep the battery full.
I used to load test batteries for a living. First you discharge at 1/10th the rated amp hour capacity for 6 hrs taking readings of specific gravity and cell voltage. If any cell drops below a specific gravity of 1.115 it stops the test. That gives you the current amp hour rating. After that you fully charge the battery, allow it to degas and then discharge at full amp hour rating for 10 seconds - rapid discharge - test. If the voltage drops to 75% of full battery voltage it fails. If the battery doesn't last the full 6 hours on the first test but passes the second test it is usable but only at the new reduced amp hour capacity. If it fails the second test it is scrap.
Battery life is rated in cycles. Any drain or discharge followed by a charge is one cycle. A new battery is expected to last 1500 to 2000 cycles.
 
Battery life has two components.
1. Available amps
2. amp/hours
Lead acid batteries should never sit more than 12 hours in a state of discharge and they should never be discharged to less than 20% of charge capacity. (80% discharge) Life is considerably longer if the battery is only discharged 50%
They should be run at close to that 50% before they are recharged to prevent "plate memory" but if you don't charge the battery for 12 hours permanent sulfation begins and your battery loses capacity. Never expose the plates to air, keep the battery full.
I used to load test batteries for a living. First you discharge at 1/10th the rated amp hour capacity for 6 hrs taking readings of specific gravity and cell voltage. If any cell drops below a specific gravity of 1.115 it stops the test. That gives you the current amp hour rating. After that you fully charge the battery, allow it to degas and then discharge at full amp hour rating for 10 seconds - rapid discharge - test. If the voltage drops to 75% of full battery voltage it fails. If the battery doesn't last the full 6 hours on the first test but passes the second test it is usable but only at the new reduced amp hour capacity. If it fails the second test it is scrap.
Battery life is rated in cycles. Any drain or discharge followed by a charge is one cycle. A new battery is expected to last 1500 to 2000 cycles.
Perfect advice!
I can also add that if the SOC (state of charge) is maintained above 80% and the electrolyte level is maintained above the top of the plates, if an equalize charge is run on them every few months, good batteries will easily last a decade or 2.
And I have seen plenty that were over 20 years old and still tested fine. :thumbs:
Edit: ...And I have seen plenty (not maintained) that were toast before they even made 3 years old :(.
 
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Yep! and I had one blow up on me at two years. One of the posts cracked and broke inside the case. Luckily it was in the car and I was driving when it happened.
 
The times I've seen batteries blow up have been scary, it's loud, first time it happened I thought someone was shooting at me, it sounded like a shotgun going off. It's amazing to realize that such a small space above the plates can have that much energy to blow the whole battery to pieces.
 
Hydrogen, it's what takes us to the moon. ;)
It is very loud and there is enough concussion that I thought I had hit something! I had to build a new battery tray and support... I used 16 ga. steel.:)
 
Hydrogen, it's what takes us to the moon. ;)
It is very loud and there is enough concussion that I thought I had hit something! I had to build a new battery tray and support... I used 16 ga. steel.:)
It could be more than just hydrogen.

I witnessed a large circuit breaker being tested. The breakers were so large they had separate substation to power test house. The load was a 3' length of 10 ga. wire. It sounded like a big explosion as the wire vaporized. It happened so fast the insulation on the wire did not have to to melt.

Ben
 
The issue in battery blow ups is hydrogen, it's always hanging around charging or discharging batteries, when I was a teenager I used to make hydrogen by having a jar filled with salt water, put in two bare copper wires and hook a dry cell battery to them, the gas bubbles from one wire would be oxygen and the other was hydrogen, I'd light a match and pop the hydrogen, just little tricks we learned as kids, I wonder what kids know now days or if I even want to know what it is? There are hydrogen makers, shown on the internet, that show how to make one to run on your car engine, safety warning, don't try to figure it out without building in a protective anti-blowback valve or you could have an explosive device under your hood.
 
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The issue in battery blow ups is hydrogen, it's always hanging around charging or discharging batteries, when I was a teenager I used to make hydrogen by having a jar filled with salt water, put in two bare copper wires and hook a dry cell battery to them, the gas bubbles from one wire would be oxygen and the other was hydrogen, I'd light a match and pop the hydrogen, just little tricks we learned as kids, I wonder what kids know now days or if I even want to know what it is?
My granddaughters have done that a few times and also experimented with other electrolysis.

At the tail end of this video you see the beaker.



In this video the girls made a pH indicator from red cabbage and experimented stuff they found around the house.

Edit duplicate link



One of my favorite quotes of the youngest saying.

"Grampa, can we do a periment?"

Ben
 
It could be more than just hydrogen.

I witnessed a large circuit breaker being tested. The breakers were so large they had separate substation to power test house. The load was a 3' length of 10 ga. wire. It sounded like a big explosion as the wire vaporized. It happened so fast the insulation on the wire did not have to to melt.

Ben
Back in the 70's I worked for Square D Electrical company, I built control panels, large breaker panels and up to 6,000 ampere switching and very large motor control starters using up to three 1/4" X 6" copper busbar per phase. We had a large breaker panel come into the shop that had about a one foot hole burned in the back of the panel, which was 14 gauge steel, what had happened was the electrician was replacing a large breaker, which was probably around 400 amps, the power was supposed to be off and so was the breaker, but they weren't and when the guy pushed the breaker in place the whole breaker blew up, the story is that when it did it took the nose and ears off of the electrician, high amperage electricity can do some really wild things. In making high amperage busbar there were two standards we had to go by in mounting them, one was a standard, if I remember right, 125,000 asymmetric amps and the other was for exceptional needs, 250,000 asymmetric amps, the 250,000 set up had mounting at about every two feet, I was told that if any shorts happen the bends in the busbars try to straighten themselves out. A single copper busbar 1/4"X 6"X 8' weighed 70 pounds. I kind of miss working with busbars, when things were all built, they looked like pieces of art and I felt good about what I had built.
 
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My granddaughters have done that a few times and also experimented with other electrolysis.

At the tail end of this video you see the beaker.



In this video the girls made a pH indicator from red cabbage and experimented stuff they found around the house.

Edit duplicate link



One of my favorite quotes of the youngest saying.

"Grampa, can we do a periment?"

Ben

Outstanding, what you have done for your granddaughters is priceless, who knows what effect it could have on their future, thank you for showing this, Neb, you've certainly gained my respect.
 
Outstanding, what you have done for your granddaughters is priceless, who knows what effect it could have on their future, thank you for showing this, Neb, you've certainly gained my respect.

the granddaughters are some of my highest blessings.

But since you spoke of big breakers...

Breaker.jpg

And are tested for flash over here

Tesla_Coil.jpg


Those are ABB breakers and updating their assembly plant was one of my last projects before I retired.

Ben
 
That is a lot of corona rings, what kind of voltage for these breakers? The electrical systems I worked on were mainly 440, 240, 120 and 24 and I mostly never worked on anything that had those voltages hooked up, the only thing I had to stay away from was when a high pot test was being done on the things we put together to make sure no insulators had been compromised. While typing this post I just remembered seeing a gallon can of PCB oil setting on the factory floor next to a wall, PCB oil was highly di-electric, wouldn't allow high voltage arcing and was commonly used in transformers and high voltage switches, now days mineral oil is commonly used in transformers, like the stepdown transformers that are on the power poles that supply power to your homes. Over my years of radio and electronics hobby, I have probably had contact with PCB, don't know that it has ever effected my body as presently at 78 years of age, I feel pretty dang good, thank God.
 
That is a lot of corona rings, what kind of voltage for these breakers? The electrical systems I worked on were mainly 440, 240, 120 and 24 and I mostly never worked on anything that had those voltages hooked up, the only thing I had to stay away from was when a high pot test was being done on the things we put together to make sure no insulators had been compromised. While typing this post I just remembered seeing a gallon can of PCB oil setting on the factory floor next to a wall, PCB oil was highly di-electric, wouldn't allow high voltage arcing and was commonly used in transformers and high voltage switches, now days mineral oil is commonly used in transformers, like the stepdown transformers that are on the power poles that supply power to your homes. Over my years of radio and electronics hobby, I have probably had contact with PCB, don't know that it has ever effected my body as presently at 78 years of age, I feel pretty dang good, thank God.
These breakers were filled with SF6.

Ben
 
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