Need info on using power batt on my new battery

[Dilan55]

I bought a new battery to store solar energy. It's a 12V 250AH lead acid battery. It's really heavy. When I searched online I came across something called Power batt, which they say can increase the life of the battery by extra 3 or 4 years. httpCOLON//regenxsystemsDOTcom/power-batt/ I think, on average, this battery can last about 7 years. I think, It will be an advantage if I use it. They have mentioned it can be used on any AGM or deep cycle batteries. Did anyone here try something like this? I'm interested to know more about its use. IPlease share your thoughts and opinions on using it.
Thank you.

---Mod Note: Not accusing you of being a shill or anything along those lines, but for purposes of search engine ranking, etc. I am editing the link so that members who are interested can look up the product page but it will not show up as a direct clickable link.

[PNjunction]

Heh, keep searching..

For one, AGM's are sealed so you cannot apply this stuff. And don't think you can just pop the tops off to refill what looks to be dry! It is manufactured this way on purpose. Kids on the net will pop the tops off agm trash, and not realize they have created a poorly performing flooded battery instead. If they are proposing this, well, lookout.

By far the biggest red-flag is that they mention is removing hard-sulfate. What they fail to mention, like all "additives", is that hard-sulfate EXPANDS, warps/bends/shorts plates, and breaks the grids of the plates. NOTHING will fix physical deformation / damage.

So after all that, what is left is a badly damaged battery that is high-resistance / fast self-discharge, possible "hot spots" due to now broken grids, and on and on. The battery once "rejuvinated" like this only means it may only be charged and operated with trivial loads, far below what the battery is supposed to support in the first place.

Stuff like this has been hawked since the turn of the century. Well, the last one at least. Good to see we're approaching 100+ years of magic formulas.

Tell you what - instead of wasting time with "rejuvination", how about reading up on how to treat your battery right in the first place? Cost: nothing but time.

[Sunking]

7 years, now that is some funny stuff. Who told you that line of crap? Please tell us how you intend to open a sealed battery?

[sdold]

In about 1990 when we made the switch to AGM, we had some early failures and the manufacturer (I think it was GNB) came to us and told us that the batteries we had purchased from them didn't have quite enough water added to the glass mats during assembly. We had installed hundreds by this time, so they held a training class for us to show us how to add a small amount of water to each cell. I think it was done by removing the valve, but I'm not certain. But that was a manufacturing issue and I haven't heard of any AGM being opened to add anything since then.

[PNjunction]

That's downright BAD - although with an overabundance of acid, they must have made great starter batteries - if only temporarily as they ate themselves alive - despite the addition of water later.

What the kids don't realize, and can be seen in most of the "revival" videos of agm's when water is added, is that they now follow the "flooded" charge rates, ie, no more than C/12 to maybe C/10 charge current max. They usually overfill AND apply too much of a charge, and their revived agm's (now flooded), just bubble over the top. Not to mention this revival is being done to dumpster-dive trashed batteries in the first place.

The only reason I put out this information is if someone needs to get off Gilligan's Island with a trashed agm, NOT to promote this as a real-world use procedure.

[Dilan55]

Heh, keep searching..

For one, AGM's are sealed so you cannot apply this stuff. And don't think you can just pop the tops off to refill what looks to be dry! It is manufactured this way on purpose. Kids on the net will pop the tops off agm trash, and not realize they have created a poorly performing flooded battery instead. If they are proposing this, well, lookout.

By far the biggest red-flag is that they mention is removing hard-sulfate. What they fail to mention, like all "additives", is that hard-sulfate EXPANDS, warps/bends/shorts plates, and breaks the grids of the plates. NOTHING will fix physical deformation / damage.

So after all that, what is left is a badly damaged battery that is high-resistance / fast self-discharge, possible "hot spots" due to now broken grids, and on and on. The battery once "rejuvinated" like this only means it may only be charged and operated with trivial loads, far below what the battery is supposed to support in the first place.

Stuff like this has been hawked since the turn of the century. Well, the last one at least. Good to see we're approaching 100+ years of magic formulas.

Tell you what - instead of wasting time with "rejuvination", how about reading up on how to treat your battery right in the first place? Cost: nothing but time.

Thanks for explaining . So, I should back off from it. But, I would like to know how to treat the battery as you said.

[PNjunction]

Ok, well instead of rewriting all the stickies here, we can give you some suggested starting points.

All we know now is that like all lead acid batteries, you don't want to discharge more than 50% at any one time to get any sort of cycle life from it. Less is even better. So in reality, you have about 125ah to play with during any cycle, or 1500 watt hours (12 * 250 / 2) if using an inverter. Peukert's law will change that somewhat.

So:

1) Is your battery new or old? Single or parallel with another?
2) What are you doing / planning to do with it?
3) How are you charging / maintaining it?
4) What exactly is the manufacturer / model ?
5) Do you have any tools at hand, like a multimeter, hydrometer (if flooded), or other measuring instruments like a P3-International Kill-A-Watt meter?

So many variables - and much of it is covered in stickies and threads. But if we know some of these variables, we might be able to get you to a good starting point..

[Mike90250]

Thanks for explaining . So, I should back off from it. But, I would like to know how to treat the battery as you said.

The following links are useful for battery health information. No snake oil there.

http://jgdarden.com/batteryfaq/index.htm

and

http://batteryuniversity.com/

[PNjunction]

Dilan - do you have an alter-ego as "Aiden33" over on Cruisersforum asking nearly the same carefully crafted question and link?

Can't believe I fell for this. . I'll be on the lookout for this on other forums I visit.

PowerBatt battery life extender VOIDS YOUR BATTERY WARANTEE as no battery manufacturer I know of approves of 3rd party additives - and they know what to look for if returned!