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Best Battery 4 UR $$$ Jury Is In With Verdict

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  • Best Battery 4 UR $$$ Jury Is In With Verdict

    Time for another sticky folks. After 4 years of testing, the verdict is in.

    Well the Jury is in, and the best battery for solar is unquestionable the Trojan Industrial Line of batteries. This is Trojans top tier battery product line. It surpasses all other Lead Acid batterie and blow Lithium out the door. No one can come close.

    I am a heck of a skeptic when it comes to manufactures claims. I basically do not believe anything a battery manufacture claims. To date all lies. Well not lies as they can do what they say in a Lab under tightly controlled accelerated conditions. But no battery will do hwat the manufacture claims. Expect half at best.

    Being a professional in the battery industry for over 35 years I have had the privilege to work with all Industrial and Commercial battery manufactures like Trojan, Rolls, Exide, Concorde, Crown, and C&D. None of the others count because those are not Industrial or Commercial grade quality batteries for Solar. Even Trojan and the big 6 all make consumer grade batteries which should never be considered unless it is your first set of batteries. Trust me you will destroy your first set of batteries no questions asked. It will happen

    I have also had the privilege of working with Sandia National Labs battery testing program and IEEE 450 committee who writes Industrial and Commercial Battery standards, engineering, maintenance and installation practices. What has been missing in my 35 years is a Real World Testing Standard protocol. All manufactures use accelerated test procedures they make up which cannot be duplicated or even remotely close to Real World Applications. Then about 4 years ago IEC committee took on the task to develop real world Solar PV Battery Testing Standard IEC 61427 in cooperation with NREL and Sandia National Labs out of NMSU. These two entities are the world authority on Solar PV and Battery Testing.

    The issue with all Lead Acid batteries is they do not work well in what is called Partial State of Charge aka PSOC. Lead acid batteries must be kept fully charge at 100% SOC at all times and immediately recharged after any use. Leave then less than 100% SOC and you are doing damage. HERE IS WHAT YOU MUST UNDERSTAND. No Solar PV System will keep your batteries fully charged. Not enough daylight hours to completely ever charge your batteries leaving them in a constant state of PSOC. Your
    Solar System is killing your batteries especially if you follow Solar Charge Controller Manufactures instructions. Throw them away, only a AC powered 3-stagge battery charger is capable of keeping and charging your batteries to 100%. Those of you who use a Temp Compensated Battery Hydrometer understand and know this as fact. You come here every day asking what is wrong. The rest of you have your heads stuck in the sand. You are essentially Mushrooms, kept in the dark and fed poop.

    In the last 10 years with the advent of Off-Grid Solar battery manufactures have had a storm or warranty claims. This is a result of Solar users not getting the Cycle Life Claimed by the manufactures. Those of us that have experience and been around a while have taken notice because all Commercial and Industrial manufactures have changed the Charging Algorithms for Solar users. Basically have done away with 3-stage charging and moved to Constant Current/Constant Voltage algorithms using 2.5 to 2.6 volts per cell. Significantly higher than 2.35 average. Reason is to keep your charge controllers at Maximum Smoke until the sun sets. There is another thread that covers this. Go find it here

    Trojan for the last 10 years has been working on a technology to deal with PSOC issues. About 4 years ago they came out with Carbon T2 Technology of adding Carbon to battery plates. They claimed it eliminated battery Sulfation issues and allows their Industrial line up to operate in PSOC range. Being a skeptic I did not believe a word of it and told my Trojan rep Greg what I thought. That is when Greg informed me about IEC 61427 test protocol that Trojan, Sandia, NREL, and another 3rd party agency were running long term testing Trojan Industrial Line up with T2 Tech.

    Two years ago the preliminary results were released and they looked good after the first two years of test with 2 more years to go before final results were in. I published those results about two years ago when I got a copy of the preliminary test results and it was very promising. After 1500 cycles to 80% DOD, no capacity loss. No other battery including Lithium can do that. I was still skeptical and waited for final results which came out last week. At the conclusion and compiling Trojan, Sandia, NREL, and Independent labs have confirmed after 3000 cycles in 4 year the batteries still have at least 80% or more of rated capacity, at the C/20 rate, and above 90% capacity at C/100 rate.

    What does this mean to you? It means you have your first true 8 to 10 year battery with a Warranty to back it up. Trojan claims 15 years. I will only say 8 yo 10 years. Maybe in 15 years if I live that long. If I do I won't give a crap because Solar battery system Fad will be gone. There is no other battery type that can match it. Sorry Lithium Fans, you cannot compete with that. What is really eye opening is the cost. I should say Long Term cost. The Trojan Industrial battery is the best bang for your battery dollar. Not only is it the best battery out there for Solar, long term it is the least expensive battery you can purchase.

    Your initial cost is going to seem high at $350/Kwh. Almost two to 3 times say your cheapo battery that needs replaced in a year or two. Still less than Lithium or the high end Rolls 5000 series. But when you get to end of life is where you score. That battery power is around 20 to 25-cents per Kwh roughly ½ to ¼ of going cheap batteries and Lithium. Even a Trojan RE at end of life is going to cost you 50-cents per Kwh. You Lithium folks will be paying close to 75-cents or 300% more at today’s prices and life cycle rate. Don't give me that crap about Tesla Powerwall. It is Vaporware you cannot buy or any proof it works. So save your breath.

    So the Jury is in. Trojan is $ 1 in my book and anyone else who actually measures performance. You will be able to sleep at nights.

    References:

    Trojan Industrial Battery Line Up
    Solar Industry Magazine Write-Up.
    Trojan IEC6247 Test Results
    Trojan Press Release
    Solar Pro write up

    Icing on the cake is performance. Trojan Industrial battery has extremely low Internal Resistance rivaling Lithium and NiCd. That can deliver a C/2 discharge current with less than 25 voltage drop which is huge. No other lead acid can do that except for a few high end AGM batteries like Concorde and Odyssey. They can also handle C/2 charge currents which becomes really imprtant for you folks in the north where you only get a 1 to 2 Sun Hour day. Its a BFD.

    When you consider Trojan has been around for 85 years, American made, Best warranty, and proveen track record, you gotta a winner.
    MSEE, PE

  • #2
    Very interesting.

    What does this mean to you? It means you have your first true 8 to 10 year battery with a Warranty to back it up. Trojan claims 15 years.
    Perhaps so with good care! Although at first glance one could say their testing on an individual 2v cell even at high temp (approx 104F) is merely beating the parasitic clock, that is a problem with ALL battery cycle-life prediction models that rely solely on capacitance testing after a relatively short time period compared to their projected life in real world use.

    I'd like to see internal resistance tracking tests, aka similar to the Dalhousie U battery testing gear, but I'm not sure they are calibrated for floodies.

    More interesting to me is the lower internal resistance, which allows for large arrays to get the charge done properly, or at least done well. There is no excuse for poor charging with panel prices being so low, and a flooded like this with low internal resistance to make poor solar-insolation areas rely solely on agm or lifepo4. Seems nice to have a flooded choice in that application now.

    Looks good to me. Maybe they can bring that tech out of the industrial line to something a bit more consumer friendly for us mere mortals....

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