Lead-acid longevity

[hamlet]

There is going to be trouble soon, and many will parish.  The upheavals to come will result in many manufactured items scarce.  With millions out of work, the nation will struggle to make do with less. With this in mind, what battery or electrical storage technology/strategy will do best over the long-haul?  If a fellow refrains from excessive deep-cycling of his lead-acid batteries, how many years can the investment be made to last?  What is your personal best for lead-acid technology?

-hamlet

just another wild-eyed survivalist wacko

[wooferhound]

Well ,  If the world is coming to an end, then you won't need your batteries.

But If you "baby your batteries" and keep them charged and don't use them much, you may get them to last past the end of the world, or as much as 20 years.

http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2005/3/24/04841/9273

[hamlet]

Thanks for the link. That was what I was looking for.  I'm looking for quality batteries, and a maintanece routine that will keep batteries going for the longest time possible. They're expensive enough as it is, right?    

About the world coming to an end, you can disregard. That only happens in the movies, right?  At least, until, oil goes above $100 per barrel...

-hamlet

[tecker]

 Man I'm glad you told me to disregard I was going out to buy Bread an milk.Oh yeah and beer .

[BrianK]

Its gettin to the point where you will

be glad that you listened to your grandpa

about the way things go like growing a garden

and listening to grandma when she showed you

how to can things. The younger generation

will be hit the worst ouch no video games or

cell phones

.

[RobC]

There have been a number of people around this planet in different places as of late with no power or water. I bet some of them will be getting some back up power real soon. I say even if you don't use it right now or ever it doesn't hurt to have eveything ready. If you wait untill hard times it will be to late there won't be a piece of any kind of RE equipment to be found. I just hope that the price of solar panels come down and fuel cells become practical. RobC

[Tom in NH]

> I just hope that the price of solar panels come down

I wouldn't wait for that. The price of energy will more likely go UP to make solar panels appear more economical. Start small and add to it as you can. It's like money in the bank. --tom

[wooferhound]

Well ,  If you liked that link

 then you will like these links . . .

Battery Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

http://uuhome.de/william.darden/carfaq.htm

Links to Battery information

http://www.uuhome.de/william.darden/batlinks.htm#solar

[hamlet]

> I just hope that the price of solar panels come down

The price of solar-panels (and everything else) will go up as the price of energy/oil goes up.  Already started.  Once natural gas supplies start to sputter, watch the price of electricity and the frequency of blackouts begin (NG makes the electric turbines spin.)  Then, after the raw price of energy jumps, the manufacturing price increases for everything, including solar panels.  That's why I want to get my equipement now, and not wait for the dollar to decline further, while and energy and fiscal induced inflation drives the price of everything higher.

-hamlet

[electrondady1]

"don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got till it's gone."

if we just react to the changes coming, things could get kind of messy if we don't activly start to ween ourselves off the petrochemical tit the future is going to bite our ass.people here in the western world throw things away now when they get dusty.it would be wise for a person to figure out away to be as independant of the "system "as possible.

[TERRYWGIPE]

HEY, who is old I still do some canning(mainly to show the kids), and my six year old and I love to poke arround the guarden.

              Terry

[finnsawyer]

I read somewhere that the Alberta tar sands contain enough oil for a thousand years.  The U. S. also has extensive coal deposits.  Maybe you should get a steam engine generator.

[nothing to lose]

 The end is near, the sky is falling

Never mind that was just Nasa again.

 Everyone does need to start changing for the better to be sure, and be prepared for some things to be a bit rough. Yep in just the last few years we saw the Twin Towers, just about the entire N.E. USA without power in the summer, Water shortages and power shortages in CA. often and lots other places, always some forrest fire or hurricane destroying someplace, winter storms knocking out power often for weeks, many more things. SO, who says I am paranoid, I'm not,  they really are out to get me!!  

 What I love is survival food. I see so many people go out and buy this stuff that is 5 times the price and supposed to last 10 years or so. Heck give me 100 bent cans at 2 for a buck and I am happy :0

Ya those bent ones will last nearly as long as that $5 can, and who needs food 10 years from now? I stock a ton of canned food, eat it as I want it, move the old to the front and put the new to the back. Rotate the stock! Always eat fresh food, or with canned stuff the least old!

If the world ends, then I ain't gonna survive 10 years on the food I have stored anyway so why does it need to last for 10 years?? Even if well packed I don't want to eat 10 year old spaggettie and meatballs!!

The way I eat I would have to have a football stadium to store that much food to last that long. So my bent cans will last as long as 10 year cans based on how fast I eat it, not store it. Also buying bent cans saves me money, it's less than half the normal retail price most the time! So I can afford to stock up even more cans

Solar pannels are a good idea in a way for disasters. If it ever comes down to those movie type end of the world panic days, then when everyone is stealing everything from everyone else and your trying to hide out in saftey, and everyone wants to kill you and steal your food,  that wind gennie flying over ahead is a dead give away where your at. With a solar panel you can slip out early morning before sun up toss it on the ground, hide out durring the day, come out at night and get it. Only give away your location to people actaully walking by, not the casual road driver if you have some brush in the way.

Hand crank gennie and exercise bike gennie are good for total seclusion. Besides, what do you need all that power for in this case anyway? Couple lights and a radio to hear how bad things are if it's still even broadcasting? Course I would like to watch "It's a wonderful life" a few times durring such hardships I geuss. I do need power for that TV and VCR or DVD player. And what good is it to be alive and hiding under ground if I can't play WarCraft on my Pc and 21" monitor with suround sound???  Well actually I only have 17" and it's big enough I don't even want a larger one. Size isn't important, it's the motion of the axes and catapults that count

 I do beleave in being prepared, I don't beleave in buying things I don't need just to be prepared though. Buy a ton of batteries now to last 20years when theres no real reason, and in 5 years they come out with a battery 10 times as good that lasts nearly forever and you'll be kicking yourself. Or they drop in price and you could afford 3 times as many of the same ones, and they would be new too. Have an earthquake and they all get busted your just out big bucks for nothing and have a heck of a mess too.

 That's just the way I look at it, course everyone has there own ideas, and no-one is correct or wrong about any of it, just what makes us feel better really.

 Again me, I like to buy bent canned food, save alot of money now and have enough to eat for a few months if I have too, just to get by and survive. Also I often buy a skid of salvage groceries for this reason. I get tons of good food I would normally not buy because of the price, tons of cans to store, and some things like burrito and taco shells I have to eat sometime soon beacuse they don't store well for long periods or worried about mice etc..

 I got my inverter and batteries that will last me along time in a disaster with my low power needs. If in an emergancy I would not be using much power anyway. And I could actually live with out it. A refrigerator is the only hard part, and I can dig a deep hole to help with that

 Any good deepcycle properly cared for bought today will probaly last till a better one comes out. And adding a few each year is better than buying a bunch right now that will all die at once. At least if the world ends as we know it, you would gradually run out of power as they die and could ween yourself from it slowly, but if they all die the same month or two and you can't get more your really hurting then!!

 So I geuss my thought is buy the best you can afford today that best meets todays needs and don't worry about 10-20 years from now. Heck you may die tommorow in a car wreck or get shot in the head by an armed robber and a stray shot, be in a terrorist target spot at the wrong time, worse things to worry about that are more likely to happen than the end of the world  

or is that

 I been in 3 earthquakes already and never even lived in CA. just various parts of USA! They were mild tremors, but still, and New Madrid is not that far away and they had one I geuss about 100 years ago or something that ran the river backwards! Pretty bad one! It's supposed to happen again sometime but never can remember when they said that was?? 5 years from now or was it 10 or 30??

I am more worried about if I will have gas for the car than electric, electric I can live without, but dang if I want to stay home all the time and not be driving around in my truck!

[TomW]

NTL;

Maybe, just maybe that wind genny flying is just a lure to get them in close so the person with the genny can hijack their fuel if they are dumb enough to be out driving around playing predator...

Not all wind harvesters are the meek who are supposed to inherit the earth. There are a few crazy old warriors around yet who still have that ton of ammunition and MRE's from the Y2K scare. Some will jealously defend it, too

If it comes to that you will find potable water to be more important than either food or power of any type.

Just tossing out an alternate view.

T

[thunderhead]

If you're the only person in the local area who knows how to build RE kit from junk, I imagine you won't have to work too hard to defend yourself: your neighbours will grab their guns and come out and help.

[nothing to lose]

"Not all wind harvesters are the meek who are supposed to inherit the earth. There are a few crazy old warriors around yet who still have that ton of ammunition and MRE's from the Y2K scare"

Well as I mentioned probably, I preffer canned foods

"If it comes to that you will find potable water to be more important than either food or power of any type"

I'll have it all, but you won't find it hey hey

First you break into the 3 sided underground house, then move to the back wall, figure out where the secrete door is, open that to the secret room. HA HA, nothing there but an old cot and stale crackers, and abunch of books. You can eat the crackers if you wish on the way out. Best not find that second secrete door though to the fully buried house behind that back wall, my loaded cannon is waiting right infront of my food and 10 55gal barrels of water (a dab of clorox added to preserve it) and buy the time you get that door open I got the match lit for the cannon.

And people wonder why I buy all those cheap old junk bowling balls for

 Now I am not parranoid, nor expecting the end of the world, I am building this for when the tax collector comes around. From the front and first open part of the house it's just a junk pit taxable at about $50 a year. He better not find the mansion under the hill though

And if the world happens to end, oh well I got a place to go anyway.

Lets just hope the still don't blow up in the meantime

[Peppyy]

There is a point to concider.

If you are the only guy in a given area who knows how to do those things you are even worth more if you can come up with the needed supplys. Stock up on magnets and magnet wire and such so you can build those gennys for people. There are an awefull lot of people out there who would give their first born son for electricity. I didn't say they were the brightest people, just thet they can't live without it.

About the only thing I can think of that you can't have without electricity is communication. That would be another valueable commodity. People by nature will always have the need to communicate with other people or groupes far away. They simply need to know what is happening, well most people.

Funny how a thread in this forum starts out in one manner and branches out all over the place.

[TomW]

Pep;

Funny how a thread in this forum starts out in one manner and branches out all over the place.

How true, human nature I guess. Oh, look, a cookie....

T

[finnsawyer]

Interesting!  If the Iraq war shows us anything it's that there is a lot of ordnance around.  You will not just be dealing with a bunch of guys with rifles, but a bunch of guys with RPGs.  Personally, rather than hide in a hole in the ground, I'd prefer to get together with a group of my neighbors and go take over the nearest hydroelectric power plant.  This, of course, assumes a major break down in public order and the destruction of the cities.  I'd rather start rebuilding, and if you've got the power, you can.

[nothing to lose]

Well I was somewhat joking about living in the hole, hiding out. I might sleep there  so I would wake up alive, not wake up dead, but probably not be there that much other wise

 Various things I might take action in depending on conditons of things like you say.

Actaully I am thinking about building a house sort of like I said, hidden room/shop behind a secret room, but not for hiding in. Nice cool quite work and experiment area, hard for thiefs to steal things if they can't find them.  I got some stuff I would not want stolen if it works when done, and I think there might be people that would like to get hold of a working prototype. I can think of several off hand and they know I travel a bit. If they break into an empty shop and find nothing but tools and scrap they are not smart enough to look harder for the other shop

I am sure I worry for nothing, I never build anything any good that actually works anyway. But at least I can be cool and comfey while trying

Also a good place to store my homemade firearms! Why buy a gun to go hunting if you can make your own. Even Black powder riffles are getting ridiculously priced. And the worlds best crossbow is made from a automobile leaf spring

Someday I may actually want to go hunting, for now I do alot of target practice mostly.

[thunderhead]

You are the only guy in a given area who knows how to do those things you are even worth more if you can come up with the needed supplys. Stock up on magnets and magnet wire and such so you can build those gennys for people. There are an awefull lot of people out there who would give their first born son for electricity. I didn't say they were the brightest people, just thet they can't live without it.

Thinking about how I imagine the world will survive when the oil runs out, I imagine that we will move over to local generation from renewable sources.  But not local generation for individual houses, except in very remote locations: instead people are going to want generation projects for their local village.  They don't want windmills in their back garden: they want the mains electricity back on!

I imagine that, if the worst comes to the worst and the lights really do go out, the best we could do is give our neighbours their mains electricity back.  If that includes places like the local hospital, so much the better - we benefit directly as well as earning the goodwill of our neighbours (in whatever form that takes - probably not dollars!)

So if my local community is about 1500 people in about 400 homes, my ideal is to store enough essentials to build a generation system for that number - maybe 400kW if they don't have electric cars, and maybe 600kW if they do.  That's a big generation system, but I don't believe it is beyond the capability of many people here, if they had a willing community to back them up.

The biggest issue is not magnets or wire: any scrapyard will provide plenty of motors and alternators, and for these powers field-coil systems are acceptable.  The problem is with backup storage.  Where backup storage is used on an industrial scale, the battery of choice is the Edison cell, and fortunately a variation of the Edison cell can be made with non-toxic household ingredients (nickel; iron; and sodium hydroxide solution).

With luck, the governments and utility companies will work towards this model themselves.  Of course if it all goes Mad Max, it'll be down to us.  But even if it does all work out for us Westerners, the home-brew approach would still be very useful in the Third World.

[BeenzMeenzWind]

Possibly I'm an optimist, I'm not sure? I don't really think things will get as bad as some media portrayals would like us to imagine.

What I do think is that the best way is to be independant is to stop paying big business for badly made things we can make ourselves for an amount we can afford.

If everyone did that, we'd soon drive the corporations into retreat and create a world that is more to our liking. I HATE going to the dump and watching people throw away stuff I could make cool things out of, but can't touch due to the fear of litigation all the dump owners have.

Unfortunately, the reality is somewhat different. At least for me.

I don't WANT to sell my surplus energy to the grid when we get our new out of town ecohome built in a couple of years! Why should I? It's mine.

Admittedly, I probably will. I'm 32. I LIKE my dishwasher, my microwave, my 8 ring, double oven range, my Playstation 2, my PC, my power tools and my workshop equipment.

The thing is, the end of the world isn't here yet. In the meantime, I'll continue to have my modern conveniences. I'll fit enough PVs, wind turbines, digesters and biodiesel plant that I CAN sell to the grid. I'll never make a saving compared to living here in suburbia, living the life.

But I won't have any neighbours who can complain when I decide to play rock music on the patio at midnight. I won't have any neighbours who can complain if I make a noise in my workshop on a Sunday. I won't have utility salesmen, double glazing salesmen, religious groups, struggling art students and (increasingly) uPVC roofline installers knocking at my door and filling my mailbox with junk.

I WILL have kids that know how to wire a plug, service a generator, weld, do household repairs and breathe relatively fresh air.

And then, if / when the end comes for the decadent, wasteful society we live in, I'll still have my turbines, my PVs, my digesters. And, if anyone decides to come take it away....

Well, here in the UK you even have to justify a shotgun for agricultural use. You (essentially) can't own a handgun.

You'd be surprised how easy it is to DIY claymore mines, flamethrowers and the like. If you have a lathe and a milling machine you can make a gatling gun that uses Hilti caps and ball bearings as ammo and will fire 600 rounds a minute! I have a lathe and a mill.

I can grow food and keep livestock. I'm quite good at it, actually. I know how to can and preserve. I used to be a trainee chef, I gave it up due to the hours, not because I didn't enjoy it. I can make a NICE meal out of just about anything. I'm a qualified electrician. I'm a fairly good builder and quite a good mechanic.

Let the end come! I don't intend to survive. I intend to survive with STYLE!

[Texas Al]

Some comments on the posts so far.

1. Yes, indiscriminately hoarding everything that can be useful is a waste and may prevent you from hoarding that which is indispensible. You have to figure out what you absolutely cannot scavenge, make from scratch, or substitute with something else and only stockpile that. The exception to this might be a year's supply of food to carry you over the first season of trying to grow your own, because your yields will suck unless you've already been doing it all along. But again, a pallet of cans purchased at the dollar-store plus several large jars of multivitamins will keep you alive just as effectively as all that high-end 'survival' food.
   
2. I agree with the people who pointed out the importance of communities. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. People automatically assume that all your neighbors are going to instantly turn into murderous savages, but do a thought experiment. Let's say you're the 'unprepared' neighbor and the guy with the windmills next door to you says "If you help me around the farm, and we agree to help defend each other from bandits, I'll teach you how to make your own windmills so you'll live as comfortably as I do" you'd take him up on it in a heartbeat, wouldn't you? I know I would. Being cautious and realistic about human nature is good, but no point in making self-fulfilling prophecies about everybody being out to get you. They're not, they're only out to get something for themselves and if you give them a safe and mutually profitable way to do it, that's the way they'll chose.
   
3. Big slap on the back to the folks pointing out that the real problem is storing power, not getting it. I asked the same thing on a different thread (http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2005/5/5/163244/7164) and basically came away with flywheels and Edison ironclad cells. I want to start experimenting with ironclads (and my group already has a nice little workspace in San Antonio bartered to us for that sort of thing). Any chemists or materials scientists around here? What would be the cheapest source of nickel, and how does one make it into the nickel-dioxide that ironclad cells use?
   

[nanotech]

Hrm, I had a comment here, but I guess it wasn't appropriate.  

No flaming involved, just agreeing with BMW.

Oh, well.

[Garry]

There is an E-book on the net, a biography of Thomas Edison that goes into great detail about the manufacturing process of the edison cell.

Garry

[Texas Al]

That would be very valuable to get a copy of. Do you have any additional information about it, like the file-name to search for, or the title?