Battery explosion [RE-wrenches]
Matt Tritt
solarone at charter.net
Thu Dec 2 19:40:02 PST 2004
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Hey Ray
Speaking of loose connections, I just "repaired" a battery post on the
positive terminal of a big IBE industrial set. The post had melted enough to
form a large amorphous blob of lead on top of the battery - but with no
explosions or fires, thank you. When I checked the connection I found the
bolt to be very loose and the contact only partial.
The intersting thing about this is that the owner had heard a loud buzzing
coming from the battery area for "several weeks" prior to the event. Did she
tell anyone? Of course not. These batteries are part of a
solar/generator/Trace SW system that I put in a few years back that has
experienced charging weirdness from time to time in the form of a very
noticeable cable vibration while charging through the inveters.
This seems to be a 60 cycle vibration, (I've measured "phantom" 60 cycle
AC with a non-true RMS meter on SW cables before) or pretty close to it. I
have seen this happen before in other SW installations when lots of
generator activity is going on, and remind my customers to periodically
check all the bolts on the bat's for looseness. In this case, I had
re-torqued the whole set about 6 months prior to the melt-down, but nobody
had bothered checking afterwards.
I'd like to know if anybody else has observed this type of problem in
other SW installations, or if this is merely some miserable poltergeist with
nothing better to do than loosen bolts.
Matt T
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ray Walters" <ray at solarray.com>
To: <RE-wrenches at topica.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2004 3:40 PM
Subject: Re: Battery explosion [RE-wrenches]
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Hey Randy;
That's a scary story. How big was the battery? Was it sealed or unsealed?
The only battery I ever had blow, was a golf cart battery on a golf cart.
Those carts often are unfused and a combination of a dead short and a
loose
battery terminal connection caused the lead terminal to melt into a blob
then into the plastic case where it ignited the hydrogen. After a few
exciting hydrogen fired seconds it was over. A friend siliconed up the
hole and kept using the battery.
Your account sounds much more dangerous. I can't believe 300 milliamps
could blow anything up, are you sure it was due to overcharging and not an
extremely high rate of discharge? I've heard of internal battery shorts
that create so much heat in so little time that the case blows.
Ray
>After having a battery explode in a solar gate opener control box when
the
>gate was left unused for several weeks with a 5 watt uncontrolled PV
>module, I now always install a small charge controller. The SunGuard is
>cheap insurance and peace of mind.
>
>Happy Holidays,
>
>Randy Brooks
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