When the power goes out

[ChrisOlson]

I went to AGM, my back and watering/testing batteries monthly got to the point they didn't agree. Stooping is bad for me.. so I need a battery chemistry that I can ignore...

When we moved here we didn't have utility power yet. The place came with dual Outback Radian inverters and a GB Industrial 24-cell 48V forklift battery. The battery is a 24-85-27 according to the tag on the tray. It is 1700AH and weighs 4,300 lbs. The battery has the BWT self-watering system on it that is sold by GB Industrial.

https://youtu.be/fXkysYnoCnM

The previous owners (a doctor that built the house as a vacation home) charged the battery with an old Winco generator with a John Deere diesel on it. We replaced that with a 45 kVA Caterpillar when we first moved here in the fall of 2019. The house is 3,600 sq ft, split level, and we typically use 20-25 kWh per day. The first winter we lived here we ran the generator all night every three days to charge the battery at 200 amps. The watering system has a little pump on it and all you have to do it make sure there's water in the tank for it.

We don't have solar panels because the house is all shaded by trees, and in the winter everything is buried under 6ft of snow and the sun don't shine anyway for 6 weeks at a time. Plus solar panels would ruin the battery anyway - you're not supposed to charge a traction battery until it's fully discharged down to 20% SOC. GB Industrial calls it "opportunity charging" and all it does is shorten the battery's life

[ChrisOlson]

Chris, that link that you posted is for a 6 volts golf-cart battery of 215 AH, not 220 AH.
Using those, I'll have to spend over $1300 (shipping not included) for a 48v bank.
You never answered about the link to ebay. That was 4 modules for that price, not 1 module.

5AH on a 48V string is, what? 200 watt-hours after it goes thru an inverter? It's like big whoop - close enough.

Now you're starting to get the idea - price out NEW Li-ion cells with equivalent storage. $1,300 is cheap compared to what you're gonna spend on lithium batteries.

Ok, so four USED modules out of a salvaged battery. For $4,500 bucks. You wanna know what those cost new? I got a $16,000 bill around here someplace that I had to pay to replace the battery in my daughter's Tesla. It got worse and worse, would only charge to 50-60% and say "charge completed". Then it gradually got down to 15% is all it would take. They refused to warranty it, claiming the battery was damaged by supercharging it too many times, but they got a new design battery that will fix this - it only costs $16,000 installed. One of those "modules" in it had overheated and burst and all the coolant leaked out of it. The factory authorized service center tells her, "oh - you're lucky it didn't catch on fire."

That was real good to know.

The car couldn't make it around the block anymore and what's she to do? She had to get to work. Her car is at the shop with the battery out of it, the battery is no good, she has a loan on the car and owes $20,000 on it yet, and now faced with a $16,000 repair bill and it does not say a damn thing in the warranty anywhere about how many times you can supercharge it at one of those supercharging stations.

She learned her lesson because we told her not to buy that damn car in the first place. But she'll only be gullible once because she won't buy another one.

[Bruce S]

I weigh in on this current thread.
I will keep using my NiCd and NiMh batteries.
I can easily get used Toyota modules and even fully tested and balanced packs for less than a G note.
I've worked with these before, have even done several module swap in Camry's that are still on the road.
Their while just like any battery, the charges can degrade when -20c outside they will still run my stuff.
My little banks of NiCds ( little meaning 14.4Vdc @20Ah) from my previous employer are still going right along.
I also have a few packs self built that I use for my when-the-power goes out lighting, but so far that's about it.
I have access to enough that I could build a small "Power Wall" , but life has a way of getting in the way to do so.

Cheers
Bruce S

[ChrisOlson]

We don't use our inverters and battery anymore on a regular basis since we got the utility power here. But I do shut the power off and run the house on the battery for a few days about once a month, just to keep the battery healthy. If the power does go off, which actually hasn't happened since we got the generators for the township, the inverters will automatically take over the loads.

That stuff is hard to sell used. The battery is 5 years old and even a big skid steer loader can't move it. The inverters are the same age and with the Mate, DC bus box and AC bus box they are about $12,000 for the pair, including all the equipment. Nobody has the money to buy something like that, so we may as well hang onto it because we're not going to give it away.

[tanner0441]

Hi

The tesla has lots of 18650 batteries, 18mm dia and 65mm long most rated around 2 aH some do 2.4 some do considerably less. so banks of them in series parallel can supply a decent load.... Until, each little battery has a device under the positive terminal, the CID current interrupt device. It is a one trip bimetal breaker. ie overload it and warm it up, it switches the battery off before it becomes incandescent. (in theory) if you overload a pack and one of these things trips it removes the battery from service, if it is series parallele it increases the load on the remaining cells so they can start popping one after the other as the temperature of the cells increases.

Overload lead acid enough it hisses and smells, if the case swells up and the plates buckle it dies. it doesnt catch fire.

Look on YouTube the is a guy in Australia posted videos of battery packs with a FLIR camera and the temperature some of the batteries in the middle of the pack are too hot to touch. there are videos of packs that have been left to their own devices with a big chared mass in the middle.

I am expanding my small 270aH pack with more lead acid. Lithium is very good however if you have a bad back because they are not as heavy as lead acid.

Brian

[MattM]

If it was a pick'em up truck you could put some forklift batteries in the bed and disguise them as toolboxes.  Would give you weight over them back wheels, too.

[ChrisOlson]

I have LiPo batteries for my RC aircraft. They are good for that application because 10AH, 14.8V is only 854 grams (1.88 lbs).

The one on the toolbox has 57 cycles on it and it has a bad cell. I have a special charger to charge them, it checks the IR of all the cells thru the balance plug before charging and gives a readout of the battery's health and remaining capacity. The charger refuses to charge the one with a bad cell - it's a fire hazard.

The battery that's in the aircraft has 212 cycles on it and it's still good, but down to 87% of the capacity it had when new.

[ChrisOlson]

The lithium batteries are also no different from deep cycle FLA as far as usable stored power. And they are not as good as deep cycle FLA for voltage retention under load. Those little 10AH batteries, typical with Lithium, are expensive. They cost $150 apiece. They are 10,000 mAh, but you can only use 8,000 mAh (80% DoD) or it will ruin the battery and it will be no good in 50 cycles, just like the one on the toolbox.

Fully charged they are 4.2vpc, or 16.8V. Fully discharged they are 3.2vpc, 12.8V. A drop of 4 volts from fully charged to fully discharged.

A 12V deep cycle FLA fully charged is 12.75V. Fully discharged is 10.8V - a drop of only 2.25 volts.

Any time you power anything electric, especially motors, to get rated power output in watts, as the voltage drops the amps goes up and so does I^2R losses in the motor winding. An inverter is no different. So your motor or inverter is more efficient on FLA as the voltage drops under load than it is with Lithium Polymer because you're dealing with much more voltage drop on lithium than you are on FLA.

You go to 12 cell 24V FLA, fully charged is 25.5V, fully discharged is 21.6V, a drop of 3.9V.

The equivalent lithium is a 6-cell, fully charged is 25.2V, fully discharged is 19.2V, a drop of 6V.

Most 24V inverters, you get down to 22V and you are at the inverter's low voltage cutoff - go any further than that and the inverter becomes so inefficient it creates more heat than it does power output.

So I don't get the love affair with lithium batteries. They are not efficient for charging - they get extremely hot. They are not efficient for discharging - they create so much heat during discharge that the little 10AH batteries shown in my photo are uncomfortably hot to the touch when the aircraft lands. Heat is wasted power, and that's why Tesla batteries have a glycol cooling system in them - they get freaking hot and they are a fire hazard when they get hot.

What I think it boils down to is that people buy into a lot of hype and marketing propaganda because they don't have the technical knowledge to know better.

[JW]

I have LiPo batteries for my RC aircraft.

Has anyone realized that these "3 phase electric" hobby motors". I use a speed blower control for my application, I saw these and was like "WOW"
'

[JW]

I am running on a FLA on [12batt] off the speed control current load. These things suck alot of power, for me the performance is key... 

[JW]

Dam-it 

I lost my last post I pointed out there these hobby motors there is no ---

Check your motor it will have 3 wires.

[ChrisOlson]

Dam-it 

I lost my last post I pointed out there these hobby motors there is no ---

Check your motor it will have 3 wires.

Not sure what you're trying to say, but I'm very familiar with these motors. I built that aircraft from scratch. The wing motors are T-motor Navigator-series MN3510 630KV motors. They are three-phase neo magnet motors with a central stator and external rotor. They produce .66 shaft horsepower @ 4,400 rpm (each). They are basically the same concept as the axial wind turbine generators that everybody builds here, except way more efficient and powerful for their size since the the windings are wound on a steel core. The axial flux wind turbine generators don't make very good use of the magnetic material.

The speed controllers are Turnigy FET-switching three-phase inverters. The speed controllers vary the AC frequency, they measure the motor's rpm with phase feedback from the inactive phase and adjust the phase timing (phase lead) to control the torque output of the motor. The speed controllers have the two DC wires in, the three phases out to the motor, and two wires for PWM signal for throttle. The PWM signal varies from 1000 (idle) to 2000 (full throttle).

They are VERY powerful for their size, used in everything from fixed-wing aircraft to helicopters. A stacked stator 14 pole version turning at 16,000 rpm, as used in a RC helicopter, produces 5-6 horsepower for a short period of time and the speed controller/inverter puts out 160 amps of three-phase AC current for a few minutes.

[ChrisOlson]

The lithium battery used in that helicopter is a 45C discharge battery pack. It is 5.5AH, but the battery can put out almost 250 amps of DC current to the inverter for one minute. That is one advantage that lithium has over FLA.

[JW]

Don't want to step on anyone's toes 
 
https://hobbyking.com/en_us/yep-80a-2-6s-sbec-brushless-speed-controller.html

I run this off a 12v car battery.

[ChrisOlson]

Don't want to step on anyone's toes 
 
https://hobbyking.com/en_us/yep-80a-2-6s-sbec-brushless-speed-controller.html

I run this off a 12v car battery.

Yes, and it will work fine on a 12V FLA. It's a simple FET-switched three-phase inverter. But it needs a PWM signal for the throttle or it won't function.

[JW]

I used to race 12th scale, "on carpet" we nervier had it that good, efficiently pm dv compete. a magnet motor can not compete accept. The -p

[ChrisOlson]

We had a Tesla that caught on fire here on County V over the weekend. It reportedly quit going down the road. The two people in it got out and noticed smoke coming out of it. They got away from it before it exploded. It caught on fire just after lunch last Saturday. The fire dept worked on putting it out, but it was still burning on Sunday morning. It got so hot it melted the road and set that on fire, set the ditch on fire, thankfully it was by a swamp so they kept the fire from spreading. But they used 13,000 gallons of water just to keep it cool enough so the asphalt in the road wouldn't keep burning.

It is now like a superfund cleanup site. The amount of water required to control it resulted in groundwater contamination right by a swamp. A few thousand yards of dirt, and a section of the road have to be dug out and hauled to a toxic landfill someplace, and then replaced and the site restored. They've been testing the material removed and it was more extensive than originally thought. There's toxic materials still coming out of the site and they've hauled 30-some dump truck loads out so far. Out here in the country they didn't have the convenience of a storm drain system like they have in cities that could capture the toxic runoff.

Plus not sure who's going to pay for it. Lithium batteries are hazardous materials and are subject to DOT's Hazardous Materials Regulations (HMR; 49 CFR Parts 171–180). It's illegal to even ship one under 49 CFR section 173.185 without all the proper hazmat insurance and paperwork. And then they put them in electric cars? They're going to have to include an environmental hazardous materials surcharge on EV insurance because when one catches on fire they are an environmental disaster, and they are extremely dangerous. This is well known, but little is done about it because they are the latest political posturing statement that politicians can use to claim they're gonna "save the planet".

Daughter has had zero luck getting rid of her Tesla. We bought her a nice Jeep Compass and she's stopped making the payments on the Tesla. She's gonna let the bank take it. Not really all that great for her credit rating, but at this point she has no choice. Elon Musk is a fraud anyway that has sucked millions of people into his scams that he funds with taxpayer dollars thru government subsidies, including Tesla. If you're interested, there's a pretty good series that presents the facts.

https://youtu.be/c-FGwDDc-s8

https://youtu.be/DopFo1rjAr4

[XeonPony]

We had a Tesla that caught on fire here on County V over the weekend. It reportedly quit going down the road. The two people in it got out and noticed smoke coming out of it. They got away from it before it exploded. It caught on fire just after lunch last Saturday. The fire dept worked on putting it out, but it was still burning on Sunday morning. It got so hot it melted the road and set that on fire, set the ditch on fire, thankfully it was by a swamp so they kept the fire from spreading. But they used 13,000 gallons of water just to keep it cool enough so the asphalt in the road wouldn't keep burning.

It is now like a superfund cleanup site. The amount of water required to control it resulted in groundwater contamination right by a swamp. A few thousand yards of dirt, and a section of the road have to be dug out and hauled to a toxic landfill someplace, and then replaced and the site restored. They've been testing the material removed and it was more extensive than originally thought. There's toxic materials still coming out of the site and they've hauled 30-some dump truck loads out so far. Out here in the country they didn't have the convenience of a storm drain system like they have in cities that could capture the toxic runoff.

Plus not sure who's going to pay for it. Lithium batteries are hazardous materials and are subject to DOT's Hazardous Materials Regulations (HMR; 49 CFR Parts 171–180). It's illegal to even ship one under 49 CFR section 173.185 without all the proper hazmat insurance and paperwork. And then they put them in electric cars? They're going to have to include an environmental hazardous materials surcharge on EV insurance because when one catches on fire they are an environmental disaster, and they are extremely dangerous. This is well known, but little is done about it because they are the latest political posturing statement that politicians can use to claim they're gonna "save the planet".

Daughter has had zero luck getting rid of her Tesla. We bought her a nice Jeep Compass and she's stopped making the payments on the Tesla. She's gonna let the bank take it. Not really all that great for her credit rating, but at this point she has no choice. Elon Musk is a fraud anyway that has sucked millions of people into his scams that he funds with taxpayer dollars thru government subsidies, including Tesla. If you're interested, there's a pretty good series that presents the facts.

https://youtu.be/c-FGwDDc-s8

https://youtu.be/DopFo1rjAr4

Tesla used the worst possible battery chem to claim the range, Compare to the Nissan leaf has never had a battery fire, but they can't boast the range, just bullet proof reliability, sadly most them are copying Teslas sh*t battery system, so we'll be seeing more fires.

the more energy dense the battery is the more fragile it is to keep it from spontaneous release of said energy.

[ChrisOlson]

Tesla used the worst possible battery chem to claim the range, Compare to the Nissan leaf has never had a battery fire, but they can't boast the range, just bullet proof reliability, sadly most them are copying Teslas sh*t battery system, so we'll be seeing more fires.

the more energy dense the battery is the more fragile it is to keep it from spontaneous release of said energy.

For our daughter it was a rather expensive lesson. These things are piling up on car lots and they can't sell them. I think I read where one of the major car rental outfits is dumping their EV fleet and going back to gas engines because the EV's are too expensive to operate and maintain. Which is going to further depress the used market for them. Like all fads, they hit their peak and then reality sets in.

[JW]

 I feel the same about these battery bank systems. These battery systems are just too new. Also I don't like the 600v to 800v running volt systems. there's been concerns from first responders with auto accidents. I've seen fire trucks hose down the batt banks and after 10 hours they still cant put them out.

I preferer a low voltage systems(100v max DC) myself. We all know there is a need for better battery systems. During with my work with my invention of a "4 cycle steam engine" I also patented (for education) a variable lift direct injection valve. In order to make  it lift it needed water cool the electromagnetic coil conductor. We can do better with high amp low volt systems.

I actually patented the thing   https://patents.google.com/patent/US8261575B1/en
It uses centrifugal force at running speeds to self pump the coolant thru the armature coil wires. 

its a low voltage traction motor design for an EV. Why cant we have EV that will burnout and smoke the tires like a hotrod.

There should different types of EV's