Isoutar:
for expediency i did a copy and paste job
"1/ NiFe contains no toxic heavy metals. The USA Dept of Energy points out that 3% of lead acid batteries end up being lost to the environment due to unscrupulous recyclers and negligent owners."
this is a fair point, but i would like to add this to the discussion, it is highly doubtful 3% of deep cycle batteries simply get thrown in the dump, car batteries on the other hand probably make up the vast majority of those simply pitched in a ditch and not recycled properly, also the chinese have a horrible record for dumping toxics so even though the ni/fe battery is non toxic it hardly offsets the other major toxic problem they are responsible for, and...
bearing in mind it is a good thing to be clean and recycle, i cannot afford to worry about others practices, but rather concern myself with best value and do the responsible thing myself and recycle toxic's and buy from reputable sources that do a good job of doing the same with toxics. in the end i suspect that buying deep cycles from rolls/surrette or trojan is probably cleaner overall than buying a ni/fe battery from china all things considered.
"2/ The NiFe battery if charged and discharged totally (full voltage and right down to zero volts) is good for only about 1000 charges. However a lead acid battery would only survive one or two such complete discharges before it would be ruined. There is no deadly action that will cause an NiFe battery to fail just from one or even several hundred complete discharges to zero volts."
its nice to know that the ni/fe battery can take discharges to zero for a thousand cycles without damage, even the best flooded cells don't fair well with this abuse, the agm however can tolerate such abuse but likely not for a thousand cycles. having said that i am thinking that any system that is designed to subject a battery bank to this abuse is likely either not designed properly or is of special service design such as a ups system and not something an offgrid guy should ever design or allow to happen but on exceedingly rare occurrence.
"3/ The NiFe battery if only 30% discharged on the average is good for 5K to 10K charge - discharges including the occasional discharge right down to zero volts are both possible and have no negative effects."
do you have reference to this? 5k cycles maybe, but 10k cycles? that would be a game changer for me.
"4/ Overcharging the battery has no negative effects."
good to know, however anyone that has several thousand dollars invested in lead acid batteries ought to have
a redundant control of charging so that overcharging is something that is very unlikely if not impossible.
"5/ The definition of an expired NiFe cell is when its output is less than 70% of manufactured capacity. Many people buy expired NiFe batteries made by the Edison Storage Battery Co from 30 - 90 years ago.and are getting more than 50% capacity by simply washing them and replacing the electrolyte. They simply do not die suddenly and catastrophically like lead acid batteries often do."
this is good to know as well, and if this is truly the case would also be a game changer for me.
"6/ The rule of thumb for nickel iron batteries as quoted from Edison "Work them hard and overcharge" ... which demonstrates their robustness."
all well and good if you are a fan of edison
"I would not have built a solar voltaic system for my house if I had to use lead acid batteries. They are a consumable and even when guaranteed for 20 years the lead acid battery rarely gets past 12 years or less. "
my problem is i don't know anyone that has been living with any battery technology that has been doing so for 20 years
and certainly none that have lived with a single set for the same,, not because they don't exist i suppose but i don't know them personally, that goes for either lead/acid or with ni/fe technology
"Curious to know if anyone has gone beyond 12 years on lead ... and with what remaining capacity?"
i am curious to know anyone that bought a set of ne/fi batteries new and have used them in an offgrid home for 20 years
and with what remaining capacity after this length of time.
you see i am trying to get a very indepth understanding of all the details of the ni/fe battery as made by the current manufactures
so that i an crunch the numbers and do a comprehensive analysis to see what the true cost of one technology is over another.
judging one battery against another solely on longevity or worse solely on the longevity of the original edison battery may be folly.
just as expecting a current production listeroid will run as long, as efficiently, and as reliably as the original lister engines, i want to know a lot more about the ni/fe before i just blindly buy into the hype.
just because a yugo looks like, acts like, and is a car like a vw golf, does not necessarily mean i would get the same kind of service from the yugo, even if it were expensive.
is there anyone here that has bought and used a set of ni/fe batteries from new for even 5 years or more in an offgrid application where they are worked instead of placed in float service?
that sort of info would really be useful, at least to me
thanks for your input, it is appreciated
bob g