I just got back from a meeting with one of my vendors. His specialty is selling new and 'reconditioned' forklift batteries and chargers. To 'recondition' the batteries he basicly removes dead or dying cells from the case and replaces them with good cells from another case. So basicly two batteries get turned into one. The bad cells are ones that cannot put out full rated power for four hours and end up with a voltage of 1.75 at the end of the test. Some cells die right away, some last the whole four hours but have a final voltage of 1.71. Both are considered bad and are scrapped. He gets 5.5 cents per pound for his scrap and will sell it to me for the same price. Because we're friends and our employers do buisness together he's offered to hand sort the cells for me and just sell me cells that barely fail his tests. At his scrap price a 880 Ah @ 24 would cost about $120 (2200lb x $.055/lb). The 880Ah rating would be, just barely, missed but wouldn't this still be a heck of a battery bank for this price? Getting them as single cells would mean I could handle them myself with a two wheeler. The guy has all kinds of crazy huge batteries in his warehouse. The 32VDC train batteries were particularily awesome. So, if you guys were starting from scratch and you had the chance to buy cells like this:
A. Would you?
B. If so, how would decide what size, VDC and Ah, to get?
My idea would be to have a good size bank that could power an inverter big enough to keep my furnace running and keep my life reletively uninterupted when we have our once a year ice storms(last time it happened I camped out at home for eight days). It would also give me a nice dump load when I build a wind alt or find some PV at an auction someplace. I want to put a HW solar collector on my south wall and the idea of the thing overheating in a power failure does not appeal to me.
TIA, John..... |
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