Nickel Iron vs. Lead Acid - Off Grid battery debate

[Brian1]

Mike,
I went with these batteries after killing many FLAs. I needed to get away from the sulfation problem. Winter is pretty tough around here.

Bill, after I downloaded that document I found I already had it on my hard drive from previous searches through that website before I bought the batteries. Now I just need to know how to measure potassium carbonates. When I get that figured out I can start to take readings and add them to my data.

Brian

[Sundetective]

Just thought I'd poke my nose in here and ask Mike how his batteries are doing? I have had mine running for about 8 months now. So far so good I guess. I know there are other's here with them. How is everyone else doing with theirs?
Brian

Hello Brian,

Since I read that you like to experiment and don't mind keeping records it may be you
that winds up coming up with answers to a few NiFe questions with your
8 month old Ni-Fe battery bank.
You probably won't want to wait until the battery bank is already half shot.

After the Ni-Fe basics everything points to the Ni-Fe Electrolyte but I don't know of anyone
who ever reported on the progress of the potassium carbonates build-up
(or ANY other build-ups)
as things went along.

You may be the first in the history of the Nickel Iron Game to share and report such findings!

You will find some fresh information about what to look for in your
Nickel Iron Electrolyte in the

'INSTALLATION AND MAINTENANCE MANUAL OF CHANGHONG SOLAR PV NI-IRON
STORAGE CELL NF-S'

Located at the Changhong Batteries website.

(Yes, that is the actual Title

Bill Blake

[Mike90250]

Just thought I'd poke my nose in here and ask Mike how his batteries are doing? I have had mine running for about 8 months now. So far so good I guess. I know there are other's here with them. How is everyone else doing with theirs?
Brian

They are thirsty beasts. At least with all the water they are electrolyzing, they will be displacing Co2 from getting in there. If you are in a site that you have mostly reliable sun - I'd say use lead-acid. I've known my area has days/weeks of cloud cover and scant solar harvest in those times, so I run a generator to keep the system up. Lead acid would require much more generator run time than I have been using.

But Chris Olsen uses a novel interpretation of "cycle" and only brings his lead acid bank up to full charge on rare occasions, and saves many cycles, and seems to not be sulfating his cells either, and getting good life and capacity with them.

[Brian1]

Just thought I'd poke my nose in here and ask Mike how his batteries are doing? I have had mine running for about 8 months now. So far so good I guess. I know there are other's here with them. How is everyone else doing with theirs?
Brian

[Mike90250]

Mike I take it you are at altitude in CA?

only 1,400' but the last storm was an arctic express, froze everything, nobody had ever seen anything like it, and when the ice in the hydrant thawed, it made a spectacular fountain.

[Sunking]

Mike I take it you are at altitude in CA?

[SunEagle]

Chop wood, haul water. sleep. lather rinse repeat. (well, not for the 8 days of arctic freeze that hit us mid December. I lost several water manifolds, the city lost a couple fire hydrants) Retirement is not all that it's cracked up to be

Hmmm. Maybe a warmer climate for retirement is not a bad idea.

One reason I moved from New Jersey (besides the high taxes) was having to thaw out my pipes on those lovely cold days of -5 F we would sometimes get.

[Mike90250]

.... How do you enjoy your new full time job after retiring?

Chop wood, haul water. sleep. lather rinse repeat. (well, not for the 8 days of arctic freeze that hit us mid December. I lost several water manifolds, the city lost a couple fire hydrants) Retirement is not all that it's cracked up to be

[Sunking]

Ah, battery watering systems are a dime a dozen, for lead-acid banks. The NiFe banks, with the strong base electrolyte, eats the acid resistant fittings.

I was just going to point that out Mike. Watering systems are made for acid, not alkaline.

So Mike just poking some fun at you. How do you enjoy your new full time job after retiring?

[Mike90250]

........ I was fortunate to get a battery that was equipped with a state of the art watering system from a company called BFS.

Basically, once the system is installed, a simple connection to a distilled reservoir is all that is needed to automatically top off all your cells. It's an awesome design and setup. Here's a link to their site. http://www.bfsgmbh.de/en ...

Ah, battery watering systems are a dime a dozen, for lead-acid banks. The NiFe banks, with the strong base electrolyte, eats the acid resistant fittings.

[Mike90250]

Hi, I'm new to this site and am wondering if we can get a status update from Mike on how things are going with his Ni-Fe? It seems something is not quite right, as I don't believe they should consume the vast quantities of distilled water he described. .......

Well, the batteries are holding up. Drinking lots of water, but whats a person to do ? Not charge them ?
I try to get a full charge daily, as the ChiCom batteries are only 20% nickel, and are NOT rated for deep discharging (that's why I got an 800ah set, along with their high internal resistance)
And today, my charge controller went ape - my 35 minute absorb time, got stuck at 217 minutes. Not sure what my charge controller was thinking, but I'm going to have to add battery water (again!) to the critters. At least it was cold and it didn't warm them up much.
And Morningstar seems to have outsourced their tech support to a non-working web page. Slick.

I charge with generator on cloudy days, and solar when it's around. If it's a cloudy week, I don't worry about fully charging, or sulfating.
I've got a carbonate test kit, but between keeping the place here running (the city had a fire hydrant freeze and blow out, as did half my domestic water plumbing manifolds) I've not had time to get into the testing, just charging and filling, and keeping the generators running. I've got daily logs for the last year, and my base loads are about 7Kwh daily (2 fridges, lights, computers, TV) and my harvest runs about 9 - 10Kwh, so the efficiency is not too bad.
So in a special situation - expected long days of clouds, not a lot of full charging, where Pb-H2So4 would suffer, they are ok, but not looking forward to the day to change electrolyte out.

--

http://tinyurl.com/LMR-Solar

http://tinyurl.com/LMR-BigLug

http://tinyurl.com/LMR-NiFe

Grundfos 10 SO5-9 with 3 wire Franklin motor (1/2hp 240V 1ph # 214505 ) on a timer for 3 hr noontime run - Runs off PV
Powerfab poletop PV mount | Listeroid 6/1 w/st5 gen head | XW6048 inverter/chgr | Iota 48V/15A charger | Morningstar 60A MPPT | 48V, 800A NiFe battery | 15, Evergreen 205w "12V" PV | Midnight ePanel || VEC1093 12V Charger | Maha C401 aa/aaa Charger | SureSine | Sunsaver MPPT

Ni-Fe status inquiry for Mike and watering system recommendation

Hi, I'm new to this site and am wondering if we can get a status update from Mike on how things are going with his Ni-Fe? It seems something is not quite right, as I don't believe they should consume the vast quantities of distilled water he described.

Also, on watering batteries of any kind, I was fortunate to get a battery that was equipped with a state of the art watering system from a company called BFS.

Basically, once the system is installed, a simple connection to a distilled reservoir is all that is needed to automatically top off all your cells. It's an awesome design and setup. Here's a link to their site. http://www.bfsgmbh.de/en

Cheers,
-Spencer

[Iron Bran]

Low Temperature Ni-Fe Battery Performance

Many people have been asking about Ni-Fe battery efficiency and discharge performance. Please see the attached test results. Tests were performed at the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, CO.

At room temp, the batteries were charged for 7 hours at the C/5 rate. (intentional overcharge)

At freezing temps, the batteries were charged for only 5 hours at the C/5 rate. (no overcharge)


Overall, I am impressed with the battery capacity and efficiency numbers. These tests were designed to confirm battery CAPACITY, and not designed for extrapolating efficiency numbers. The fact that the freezing temperature tests were so consistent leads me to believe the data is accurate and valid. I hypothesize that we could have found a more efficient round trip at normal temps by charging for slightly less than 7 hrs.

[inetdog]

No he just changed jobs to being a water boy.

Your'e a better man than I, Gunga Din.

---R. Kipliing

[Naptown]

You just thought you retired!

No he just changed jobs to being a water boy.