HUP VS Rolls [RE-wrenches]

Sat Mar 17 15:22:02 PDT 2007

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Chris,

You have me beat.....only 10 years off-grid for me....just a newbie!

I have the Surrette CH-375's in my system...fore runner to the S-460. 
They're on their last legs now (lots of abuse...a case of age and do as 
I say, not as I do).
I have installed over 400 Surrette Ch-375 and S-460s in about 42 systems 
since 1998.
And since 2002 about 60 of the 4KS-25PS and about 40 of the 4KS-21PS.

We found that they all needed aggressive charging to prevent sulfation. 
We almost lost a bank of 36 of the 4KS-25PS batteries....until we found 
that a 10 hour corrective equalization at 62 volts 2-3 times per year 
was needed.

FYI...I have 2 banks of the S530 batteries out there....they are the 
worst to keep healthy.
I won't have anything to do with them anymore.

I find that Trojan and Deka are a lot more forgiving and don't seem to 
have the need for all that extra generator or grid usage to keep 'em 
healthy. I'm sure there are others just as good, but those are the 
brands I'm most familiar with.

I stuck with Surrette as long as I could afford to....probably too long. 
I'm ready for a change and have been following this HUP discussion very 
closely. Thanks to everyone for all the great feedback!

Roy Butler
NABCEP Certified Solar PV Installer®
NYSERDA eligible PV & wind installer 
Four Winds Renewable Energy, LLC
8902 Route 46
Arkport, NY 14807
607-324-9747
www.four-winds-energy.com

Although no trees were killed in the sending of this message, 
a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

Chris Worcester wrote:

>Hi Gang,
>Does anybody have anything good to say about the Rolls batteries anymore? We
>have installed them in at least a dozen systems; they are all working,
>although some of the clients have complained about a lack of storage
>capacity/performance. We haven't seen any failures yet. We use the S-530's
>in the small systems and mostly the 2-KS-33's in our large off grid systems.
>I really like my IBE 2 volt 1476 Ah batteries that I installed here in 1991,
>16 years ago, that's 5840 days off the grid. 
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Chris Worcester 
>NABCEP Certified PV Installer TM 
>USA Distributor of Proven Wind Turbines
>Toll Free: 877-682-4503
>Fax: 530-582-4603
>www.solarwindworks.com
>chris at solarwindworks.com
>"Proven Energy Solutions"
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Jeff Yago [mailto:jryago at netscape.com] 
>Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2007 6:49 AM
>To: RE-wrenches at topica.com
>Subject: Re: HUP VS Rolls [RE-wrenches]
>
>
>We had an off-grid client with 16 Decca L-16 batteries and a 8.5 kW
>generator, with a fairly large solar array.  This small generator still did
>not have any problems charging the batteries when there was a week of no
>sun.  However, the client felt after 6 years he wanted to change out the
>batteries even though we felt they still had lots of life.  He took very
>good care of the battery bank they never dropped below a 65 to 70% still
>charged level.
>
>We switched out to same size battery by Rolls and everything went to crap.
>Same generator, same array, same loads, same inverter settings, but we could
>NEVER get the new batteries fully charged with the generator no matter what.
>We also started to get generator errors due to charging demand was much
>higher than for the old batteries.  We finally had to switch out the
>generator to a larger size unit but he still could never again get his
>battery bank to read fully charged like it did with the older batteries.
>
>These may be rugged batteries and they may last many years longer than other
>brands, I do not know, but I will not buy any more unless maybe for a grid
>tie system with lots of AC power.  They are not for off-grid applications.
>
>Jeff Yago
>Dunimis Technology Inc.
>
>_____________________________________________________________
>Netscape.  Just the Net You Need.
>
>
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