<div dir="ltr">AEE Solar sold NiFe batteries from Russia in the late 1990s. They last a long time but were hard to use with inverters. A 12 volt pack has 10 cells. Each cell reaches full charge at 1.7 volts so the pack would be at 17 volts. that is 68 volts in a 48 volt pack. inverters turn off for over-voltage before that. When they are operating the cells are at 1.2 volts. The charge efficiency is about 60% when you look at watt hours in vs. watt hours out. They also use a lot of distilled water. I had a set that required watering every 3 weeks. I did not keep up with watering once and one of the cells exploded when the water level got below the plates.<div>I would suggest L-ion batteries instead.</div><div>David Katz</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr">On Wed, Nov 21, 2018 at 10:37 AM Ray <<a href="mailto:ray@solarray.com">ray@solarray.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<p>Charge efficiency is really low, Charging parameters can be hard
to get right, Voltage is not stable under heavy loads, and they
are really expensive to boot. I've never sold them for these
reasons, but I have replaced some sets that customers were unhappy
with. They seem to work OK, only if there are no large surge
loads, and the battery and array are sized large enough.
Unfortunately because of the cost, folks seem to really under size
them, which only exasperates the above issues.</p>
<p>There's good reasons this old battery chemistry has not been
widely adopted by the solar industry. It does have its place, and
I understand the train industry uses it because A) they have cheap
on grid charging available, so efficiency doesn't matter, and B)
they have telecomm type loads with very little surge.<br>
</p>
<pre class="m_1825929175955128966moz-signature" cols="72">Ray Walters
Remote Solar
303 505-8760</pre>
<div class="m_1825929175955128966moz-cite-prefix">On 11/21/18 10:55 AM,
<a class="m_1825929175955128966moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:dan@foxfire-energy.com" target="_blank">dan@foxfire-energy.com</a> wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<span style="font-family:Verdana;color:#000000;font-size:10pt">
<div>Hi Guys, I have a potential customer inquiring about
installing a pre packaged Iron Edison system.. I recall
hearing strange stories about Ni-Fe batteries but don't recall
the specifics. I have done a few searches with mixed results..
And have friends advising I run like a Rabbit.. Thought I'd
run it by you folks for an update..</div>
<div> Thanks, and Happy Turkey Day.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>db<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
Dan Brown<br>
Foxfire Energy Corp.<br>
Renewable Energy Systems<br>
(802)-483-2564<br>
<a href="http://www.Foxfire-Energy.com" target="_blank">www.Foxfire-Energy.com</a><br>
</div>
</span>
<br>
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