Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Death of a Battery

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Death of a Battery

    Has anyone posted this yet?
    http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/...-of-a-battery/

    "All the metrics looked great. The 2.7-year-old lead acid batteries in my off-grid photovoltaic system appeared to have settled into a consistent mid-life performance. Monthly maintenance (equalizing, adding distilled water) promised to keep the batteries in prime condition for some time to come. Based on cycle depth, I expected another 2.5 years out of the present set of batteries. Life was good.
    Then, during my absence over the course of Thanksgiving weekend, one of the batteries expired...."

  • #2
    Originally posted by DanKegel View Post
    Has anyone posted this yet?
    http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/...-of-a-battery/

    "All the metrics looked great. The 2.7-year-old lead acid batteries in my off-grid photovoltaic system appeared to have settled into a consistent mid-life performance. Monthly maintenance (equalizing, adding distilled water) promised to keep the batteries in prime condition for some time to come. Based on cycle depth, I expected another 2.5 years out of the present set of batteries. Life was good.
    Then, during my absence over the course of Thanksgiving weekend, one of the batteries expired...."
    Darn kids. You do everything in your powr to keep them safe, well fed and happy and when you look away for a second one runs away from home.

    Oh. I'm sorry. This post is about FLA batteries not children.

    Comment


    • #3
      About the 10th time this old POS story has surfaced here. Try spending another few hours looking for more BS to post Dan.
      MSEE, PE

      Comment


      • #4
        A mix of old and new, series/parallel, possible high-resistance contacts, what appears to be a "ladder connection" instead of "diagonal", a coiled-up mess of spare wire possibly contributing to voltage-drop, you name it.

        All the data logging in the world can't prevent one from making this newbie mistake. He got off on the wrong foot and will be staying there until that lesson is learned.

        Comment


        • #5
          Yeah. A lot of the comments on his blog took him to task for paralleling
          12 volt batteries instead of using 6 volt batteries all in series.

          I can hear him saying in his own defense:
          "Dammit Jim, I'm a physicist, not an electrical engineer!"
          BTW he even wrote up the design a few years earlier in a magazine article for physicists:
          http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip...1063/1.2963010

          (Where was this discussed before? I searched, and didn't find it.)

          Comment

          Working...
          X