short lived UPS system [RE-wrenches]

Jason Fisher jfisher at nahbrc.org
Thu Sep 25 05:28:16 PDT 2003


I've now had two Y2K customers (I know, but what was I going to say, no?),
each with PV charging sixteen L16s @ 48V and SW's in sell mode, have their
entire banks fail in the last year. These robust battery banks were only
about 3 years old! It's hard for me to know what happened since they claim
they watered the batteries and cannot give me a good idea of whether the
system was cycled or equalized on any regular basis (which probably means
none of these events occurred!). These recommendations had been given to
them in their owner's manual.
I also have another customer, also with sixteen L16s of the same vintage,
who has kept the water up, cycled the bank frequently, and equalized every
few months. His bank is doing fine.

I stopped selling flooded batteries to grid-tied PV customers who wanted
backup in 2000. I simply didn't believe them when they said they "enjoy"
watering the batteries and interacting with their PV system. Now that I've
experienced these premature failures, I'm sure this was the right idea.

On this note, any common failure modes of gells or AGMs anyone knows about?

Jason Fisher

Aurora Energy LLC
Annapolis, MD
410-268-3088
jason at aurora-energy.com

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