Suggestions for new 12V gels 200Ah+ UK?

[SparWeb]

Hopefully there was some hops extract in whatever medicine you administered.


What facilities exist to help you dispose of the old batteries?

[CraigM]

I see the purchase has been made and I’m sure it will suit your needs.

Lithium LiFiPo4 batteries are the rage in the RV (Caravan in the UK?) community. Yes they’re expensive but when you consider KWh’s available per charge and upwards of 4000 cycles that can last for 10 years or greater…. They are worth researching.

[Mary B]

Hopefully there was some hops extract in whatever medicine you administered.


What facilities exist to help you dispose of the old batteries?

hops extract? yech!

Whole leaf hop cones or pellets(if I must). Extracts are from the old old days of home brewing...

[DamonHD]

@SparWeb it was a slghtly excessive number of pints of a certain famous Irish stout...

@CraigM I think that Scruff's observation that if it's not actually being moved there's much less reason to move to Lithium chemisty, and I *still* don't see solar controllers and Li BMSes that I believe in.

@MaryB Luckily I have an excellent microbrwery 5 minutes' walk from my front door and I fetched 4 litres of their finest today which is now resting in my fridge!  (Amelia, but in my growlers not in cans: https://shop.theparkbrewery.com/product-details.xhtml?cpid=AM02 )

[Mary B]

Have a microbrewery 30 miles away... can buy their beers in all the local liquor stores too. They do some test beers that never get bottled(they do not can anything, glass only, nice bottles too, I have reused them!) in the brew pub that I have tried. They get weird now and then though LOL Blueberry beer anyone? Yes it is a blue beer... yes it was disgusting!

[DamonHD]

This one did a really good lemon beer --- but it continued to ferment in the can and was prone to explode so it had to be recalled!

Rgds

Damon

[Mary B]

This one did a really good lemon beer --- but it continued to ferment in the can and was prone to explode so it had to be recalled!

Rgds

Damon

I remember seeing that on the beer forum! One guy had a can explode in his fridge, it made a mess!

[Scruff]

I'm also noticing the trend that people who killed lead batteries before their time are equally successful at killing LFP before their time.

My gels are holding up grand...I mostly use them for grid-tied diversion automation rather than cyclic. But I pull C3 when it suits me. I haven't prodded them for a while.

My preference for static applications by order:

OPzS Flooded Lead
Motive Flooded Lead
Firefly AGM
Japanese Yuasa AGM
Engine Starting Flooded (cost)
GEL (safety/sealed)
NiCd
LFP
NiFe
Other Li flavours.

[DamonHD]

NiMH anywhere on your list?  Maybe in place of NiCd?

Rgds

Damon

[Scruff]

Yurp. NiCd and NiMH...very misunderstood. The memory effect and self-discharge are their downfall. They could better LFP with a BMS to match in continuous operation applications.

Li temperature tolerances are too constraining.

Having said that my 2.5kWh LFP battery warms itself up at 6:30am every morning by throwing it's payload into an immersion. It's like a hot bowl of porridge for the ensuing leisurely AC-coupled solar recharge the rest of the day.
At this rate I'll recover half of what it owes me by end of life.

[DamonHD]

Not on your scale, but I have failed to make  best use of 100s of Wh of NiMH and even 3M self-discharge might do to carry a a system through the very depths of winter...

https://www.earth.org.uk/What-to-do-with-150-bad-NiMH-AA-cells.html

Rgds

Damon

[Bruce S]

I, on the other hand "love" NiCD/NiMH and use the $#|+te out of them.
BUT, then at one time I had a large stock of them and know how to use their high discharge abilities.
I just recycled my original 14Vdc 20Ah NiCD brick, that was the first of many connected to the Alky cooker. There's a pic on here somewhere of it and it's little brother.
Knowing the past issues, I use them to take the brunt of the workload while using the FLAs as the gate keeper of electrons.

NiCD/NiMH love to be used , so I do just that. Not ever had an issue with memory effect since I drain them to 80-85% DOD on a regular basis.

YMMV
 

[Scruff]

NiMH usage profile is; Thrives on abuse. A major reason for their fall from grace was having to charge them before a job after sitting in a toolbox overnight or longer. Exacerbated by any enthusiasts looking to recell their devices could only source replacement cells that were sitting for years on a shelf prior to sale pushed aside by the 18650 Li-ion uptake.

How come none of those 18650 building powerwall soldering masochists ever turn their hand to Eneloop packs? I'd heart to see that drag race.

[tanner0441]

Hi

I have just assembled a 15V pack of NiMh and according to the sleeve on the battery they are 2.6Ah or 2600mAh, which for a cell the size of a AA battery I find difficult. I didn't have them long enough to charge one and put them in a discharger to measure the capacity. the only drawback I see is the voltage per cell against Li. Makes the pack size larger. 

I intended to build a large capacity pack of 18650 Li cells but I gave up. Aquiring the cells over time kept the cost down but charging is a different story, the chargers are not cheap with the management system. so now I have returned to lead acid, cheaper easy to charge, stand a reasonable leavel of abuse, and dont have electronics suddenly shutting them off when the voltage drops below the recomended level.  As long as lead acid are not left in a discharged state for a long time they will pick up.

Brian

[mab]

I must admit I think NiMh have been passed over due to association with NiCd - they don't suffer from the high self discharge of NiCd - I re-celled one of the NiCd packs of my old Atlas Copco drill with NiMh and it would work for a month or two on a single charge. It worked well for years - it was the drill that gave out in the end.

Whilst they can't compete with lithium for capacity/size/weight they were a good choice for power tools, although I'm not sure if there are issues with scaling up for larger devices like cars or powerwalls - and due to their charge profile you can't parallel up lots of small cells like tesla does with 18650s in their battery packs.

[Bruce S]

While we are straying from DamonHDs original post; I don't think he'll mind the extra info.

There was a All electric car built back in the 70s-80s? Corbin Sparrow ? used 36Vdc and FLA batts  too short a distance and horrible charging/LVD would toast FLAs in short order. One person was using a bank of NiCDs to run as the battery charger for the FLAs. Novel idea to keep from killing the FLAs since the NiCDs can take a beating.
He posted a long time, lost sight of his posts though.

I took the knowledge that Battery University freely gave and the field knowledge I gained to make the most of the ones I still use. Using the GHURD charger I keep using them until they are completely wore out.
I also use Free Li's from laptop battery packs. These I use for "little" things LEDs, I'm still learning how they react the certain workloads.

 Cheers

[DamonHD]

I observe that thiough I have seen much better system utlisation since the battery replacement, only very rarely does the charging current get near 15A (and power over 200W).  None at all before the battery replacement.  Thus rarely is the controller the bottleneck.

Rgds

Damon

Code: [Select]

% egrep 'A1P [2][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9] ' /var/log/powermng/20??????.log
/var/log/powermng/20210915.log:2021/09/15T11:20:06Z AL 14957 B1 13984 B2 -1 P 16292 BV 12863 ST H D E A1P 210610 B1T 19 UC 100 A1V 29743
/var/log/powermng/20210915.log:2021/09/15T11:40:06Z AL 14998 B1 14032 B2 -1 P 14748 BV 13802 ST H D E A1P 210535 B1T 19 UC 100 A1V 29523
/var/log/powermng/20210915.log:2021/09/15T11:50:07Z AL 14998 B1 14136 B2 -1 P 15098 BV 13898 ST H D h A1P 212347 B1T 19 UC 100 A1V 29258
/var/log/powermng/20210926.log:2021/09/26T11:30:06Z AL 15000 B1 14139 B2 -1 P 18862 BV 13907 ST VH D h A1P 212679 B1T 18 UC 100 A1V 29532
/var/log/powermng/20210929.log:2021/09/29T11:00:06Z AL 14036 B1 14121 B2 -1 P 24020 BV 13898 ST VH D h A1P 200087 B1T 16 UC 100 A1V 27591
/var/log/powermng/20211001.log:2021/10/01T11:30:07Z AL 14476 B1 14258 B2 -1 P 15271 BV 13898 ST VH D h A1P 206730 B1T 16 UC 100 A1V 30179