[RE-wrenches] Concorde Lifeline Batteries

[larry at starlightsolar.com]

FWIW, after selling Lifeline for about 13 years, we discontinued sales due to early battery failures. The capacity loss of a single battery in a series bank became very high to where some battery banks needed replacing in 1-3 years. Earlier batteries (from about 2001)  were lasting 6 to 10 years. We had one customer that followed our recommendation to use high voltage and equalize regularly that had the batteries for 13 years before changing to Li-ion. That battery bank (12kWh, average discharge about 20% DoD) was sold to someone who is still using it. 

The early batteries were great and had our highest recommendation. We changed to installing Fullriver instead which has been as good as the early Lifeline batteries. 

I spoke with Lifeline about the early failures and their conclusion was that we or our customers were doing something wrong. We have probably installed over 600 Lifeline battery systems (2S2P and larger) over the years using practically identical power systems. I’m sure we did not decrease the care of our installations or customer education on proper use. I would like to know if anyone else experienced premature Lifeline failures, especially if it is recent.   

Larry Crutcher
Starlight Solar Power Systems

A typical install of Lifeline 2V cells, 15kWh bank, RV system, Magnum Energy, Midnite Solar



On Mar 17, 2021, at 3:35 PM, drake.chamberlin at redwoodalliance.org wrote:

Hello Wrenches,

Is there any reason to use Concorde Sun Xtender batteries instead of Concorde Lifeline batteries with PV systems?

The Lifeline is what is available from my supplier at this time?

Thanks,

Drake

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches_lists.re-wrenches.org/attachments/20210318/939c94e7/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: lifeline-2v-bank-web.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 69603 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches_lists.re-wrenches.org/attachments/20210318/939c94e7/attachment.jpg>