You'll probably be better off in the long run to buy a true deep cycle battery for the purpose you've indicated. As has been mentioned, you'll need two of those golf batteries to get 12 volts.
B.O.
Think
A true deep cycle usually does not list CCA, CA, MCA.
A marine 'starting' battery is a car battery. A marine 'trolling' battery is more deep cycle.
The trolling batteries at Wally-World now list CA... I wonder what that means?
The group 24 'was' 85ah ($39), group 27 'was' 100ah ($54).
A pair of 6v golf cart is about 210ah, but they go for a lot of years if they are not abused.
AH is amp-hours. Amps times hours. A 72ah will put 12 amps out for 6 hours (12X6=72) or 6 amps for 12 hours (6X12=72), or 2a for 36 hours, 1a for 72 hours...
The numbers are simplified, but you get the idea. It says how much 'electric' is in it.
FYI- PepBoys auto parts has a 400w Vector inverter this week for $22.50 after a $5 mail in rebate, if you have them local.
G-
I haven't bought one in about a year now, but Wal-mart/Sams Club has a 12V deepcycle rated for 115amp hours for about $55 unless things have changed since I bought my last one. These have been doing me fine, I have 3 of them, but I don't have them in constant fulltime use, but I do use and even abuse them alot. So far I like them fine myself. They still work good, but who knows for how long they will live?
As for the 6V golf cart batteries, I don't know which would be better, those or these 12V ones. Probably 2 of the 6V, but then again you have to add 2 at a time.
Standard ranking, in order:
- Forklift battery
- L-16 deep cycle
- golf cart
- solar gel cells (pricy)
- telephone cells
- RV/marine batteries
- car batteries
Has anyone come across this rating system before? I can only guess that a 6 hour rating is based on a standardized discharge current, but I dont know what that might be.
Text lifted (with thanks) off of...
http://www.windsun.com/Batteries/Battery_FAQ.htm
A battery "cycle" is one complete discharge and recharge cycle. It is usually considered to be discharging from 100% to 20%, and then back to 100%. However, there are often ratings for other depth of discharge cycles, the most common ones are 10%, 20%, and 50%. You have to be careful when looking at ratings that list how many cycles a battery is rated for unless it also states how far down it is being discharged. or example, most golf cart batteries are rated for about 550 cycles to 50% discharge - which equates to about 2 years.
How depth of discharge affects cycle life on batteriesBattery life is directly related to how deep the battery is cycled each time. If a battery is discharged to 50% every day, it will last about twice as long as if it is cycled to 80% DOD. If cycled only 10% DOD, it will last about 5 times as long as one cycled to 50%.
Obviously, there are some practical limitations on this - you don't usually want to have a 5 ton pile of batteries sitting there just to reduce the DOD. The most practical number to use is 50% DOD on a regular basis. This does NOT mean you cannot go to 80% once in a while. It's just that when designing a system when you have some idea of the loads, you should figure on an average DOD of around 50% for the best storage vs cost factor.
Lead acid batteries go to heck if they dont STAY charged too, something about them "sulfating", like i care what it is called, i just realized to late, that letting my car battery drift down was killing it. (i dont drive much for the "environment")
SO
add to the horrible charge/discharge life of a Lead Acid, and tack on the death from staying discharged to it :-( and prefer that the battery be charged, you know in that fantasy world :-)
now that i keep the LA batteries charged properly i am getting MANY more years out of them, then the former stupid way i dealt with them.
some gell cell info i learned (also the hard way)
overcharging these creatures causes bubbles in the darn gel (electrolyte) and they never leave. and the further you discharge them (or any LA) the less cycles you get, as bad as 20 cycles for full discharges.
so with gell cells the same thing is true, you want to keep them charged, and the charge control is even more important (bubbles).
then i learned (i did not want to know) that they ship the lead and acid off to 3rd world countries to "recycle" the materials. it was a few years ago, but they showed this village living in its usual squaler conditions, with a acid creek and lead lined children. it was not a good thing to do to people.
i just thought i would comment, this stuff ALL sucks, NIMHY and LI-ION are much more expencive, but they love to be discharged and charged.
there really is no totally practical way to store human type energies, without caveats.
AH is generally at the 20 hour rate. Reserve Minutes is a much faster rate, lowering the calculated amp hours.
No, I can't convert one to the other with any accuracy.
No, I don't know why they want to keep everyone confused.
G-
Lithium is poisonous, causing kidney failure, and also psychoactive, of course. The other reagents in Li-ion batteries are organic solvents, and like most organic solvents they are carcinogenic and great polluters, especially of groundwater.
The only battery chemistry I'm aware of that is truly environmentally friendly would be a version of the Edison cell with caustic soda as the electrolyte. Sadly, they are high-maintenance, need watering quite a bit, and they are not terribly efficient - returning only 60% or so of the energy used in charging them.
But the principle reagents - nickel, iron, sodium hydroxide - are cheap, plentiful, and unlikely to do your environment much harm, since they form compounds that are pretty well found everywhere on the planet. Sodium hydroxide is about the worst, in that its corrosive, but if exposed to air it absorbs carbon dioxide quite quickly and ends up as a solution of washing soda.
The genuine Edison battery contains lithium hydroxide, which is poisonous (and psychoactive).
I have heard that there are exemptions, but they are few and far between.