Rotating Batteries and Burning Bushes [RE-wrenches]

Tom Elliot, Guffey Energy Works telliot at wagonmaker.com
Thu Jun 27 17:21:56 PDT 2002


You can avoid a lot of that by not installing any series/parallel battery
banks.  The big UPS and standby power battery installations all use main
buss bars for their parallel connections.  By doing that you even out
current draw from each series string rather than having the draw spread
unevenly over a series/parallel connection.

Different series strings in series/parallel get loaded and unloaded at
different rates.  My bank of L-16s failed prematurely, though maintained
faithfully, because of their series/parallel arrangement.

I now use AGMs with a main buss bar arrangement.  It's been running for only
a year but I'm impressed with the stability and the ease with which it can
be serviced if need be.

Tom Elliot


----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Lane, Energy Conservation Services" <tom at ecs-solar.com>
To: <RE-wrenches at topica.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 27, 2002 8:40 AM
Subject: Rotating Batteries and Burning Bushes [RE-wrenches]


I have noticed a swelling at the terminals on the first and last Trojan L-16
in 48 volt battery banks. In some cases I have had to replace battery #1 and
#8 and #1 and #4 in a 24 volt bank. A German engineer who works with diesel
engines and trace invertors on large systems recommends rotating batteries.
All my batteries use 40 cable from all the + to - on the batteries. I asked
Richard Perez about the swelling phenomenon at MREA last week. HE said that
the first and last battery with large draws from an inverter have a
capcitator type of effect and he suggests rotating batteries if invertors
are used. He said that larger the cables - the worse the effect. One come
systems in the past I have rotated #1 and #8 with #4 and #5.

NOTE: All batteries had plenty of water that had the swelling problem. And
feedback on rotating batteries? Richard said he would write an article on
this.

The MREA Fair was great - it was nice to meat other old gray beards who have
been rolling the sun up the hill for so many years. It got me juiced up in
the age of deadly global burning BUSHES and other Texas homegrown dopes
transplanted to Florida.

-Gator Tom

PS: One water miser cap's benefit is that you can check the water level
without removing the cap. Hydrocaps sometime turn to charcoal dust when
equalized. Hydrocaps are sandwiched carbon cylinders with a platinum screen.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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