GENERALLY SPEAKING, connecting batteries in series is better than in parallel - as a "battery" is a "series" of cells. Get 2 big-assed 6 volt batteries and put them in series rather than 2 smaller 12 volts in parallel for the same capacity.
That's excellent emergency advice. But it GROSSLY understates the situation. Ask any blind person if they wish they'd done whatever caused their blindness differently. There is ZERO excuse for not wearing eye protection when dealing with batteries.
I had an RV starting battery quit on me. Zero, nothing, nada. I related the experience to a friend who described his experience. Apparently, the problem was an open-circuit internal to the battery. When he took his back, the dealer accused him of being too dumb to charge a battery and took it out back. When the charger turned on, the spark was internal to the battery and blew acid everywhere.
I shorted a large battery once. If the caps were not off, I'm sure it would have. There were 6 fountains of liquid hitting the vans ceiling.
Greg
parrell batteries will self discharge unless all batteries are exactly the same charge level........
When I started my job 38 years ago, there were practically no safety regulations...you would not have believed it.
That looks like something I might be interested in. I've been watching the news coverage of the electric power outages in Toronto and New Brunswick.
I'm concerned that if we got an ice storm here in Winnipeg, a power outage wouldn't simply mean that we'd have no electricity for heat, it'd be far worse than that. I have a hot water heating system in my building, and in that situation, the water in the heating system could freeze and cause a huge amount of damage with burst pipes and cracked radiators. All I would need to prevent that damage is about a 1500 watt power source to supply power the heating system for as long as the conventional power is out.
I'm wondering if I could simply do that with car batteries and this Xantrex inverter? Until now, I was thinking of just using a small gasoline powered generator, but that's problematic with the noise and keeping the generator outside, but still preventing it from being stolen when everyone else needs electric power too. This Xantrex inverter wouldn't need to be kept outside, and that greatly diminishes it's likelyhood of being stolen.
(I'm aware that the problems that happened in Toronto as a result of the ice storm wasn't siimply because the weight of the ice caused power lines to break or transmission towers to come down. Most of the problem was due to ice collecting on tree branches, and those tree branches coming down and taking out aerial power lines when they did. So, how likely an ice storm is to cause a power outage depends on many factors, including what kinds of trees grow along the routes of power distribution lines, and how diligently the utility prunes those trees so as to prevent falling branches from taking out aerial power lines.)
One of the nice things about getting older. The "hey, watch this" thing wears off.
Strange. I have never seen a problem with rack-mounted battery banks in parallel. A bad battery will cause problems regardless of series/parallel connection. One would have to have some messed up wiring for there to be an issue with charge, or drain. Keep the links the same and the battery will not know the difference. Close enough and you will have to nit pick to find something wrong.
In fact, unless shorted, a bad battery in parallel will not hamper the function of the circuit. A bad battery in series will. If one battery is drawing too much on charge cycle it is weak and needs to be replaced, the same as in series. In series you will not know until you use the batteries, in parallel, you might not know at all. That is why there is such a thing as maintenance.
Many off-grid and industrial applications require that both a series and parallel set-up be implemented to obtain the desired voltage. The only fault one would notice in the parallel portion would be less run time per bank. Something one would not observe under normal usage other than an overall underperformance of the system as a whole.
Close. The battery bank will equalize the charge of *all* of the batteries. Face it, it does not matter what type of connection is used if there is either a bad battery, or a bad termination.
Bigger batteries, and parallel batteries for the sake of more current, will last longer, since discharge will be less in. Given time. I started out with two 120 amp hour batteries on the boat with isolator. It worked better with batteries in direct parallel with the trolling motor.
Greg
Yep. Want more trolling time, add another battery in parallel. The amp hours are additive. Can't do that with a series set-up. Well, not for the same cost. Ever priced a 6-volt Trojan battery? Daaaammmmn!
I don't know what kind of neighborhood you live in, but around here, a heavy chain would be plenty of deterent to someone planning on stealing a portable generator. there are plenty of unsecured ones, so I don't think a thief is going to screw around with a chained one.
As for batteries and an inverter to get you through a power outage in Canada, it wouldn't be my plan, because for short power outages you don't need the heat and for long ones unless you have a hell of a lot of batteries, it isn't going to last.
The problems are that the more batteries, the more cost, the more space they take, more replacement cost, etc. The battery pack/inverter the OP was looking at was $425. That gives him
300W for an hour and 15 mins. That's in the price range of a generator, which, IMO, and apparently most of the rest of homeowners, is a better, more practical solution. And if it's portable, it's also available for other use, anywhere you need temporary power for something.
You can't prune back far enough to prevent a 120 foot tree from hitting the power lines when it comes down. - and the xantrex would need a huge battery to keep power on for 9 days - which is how long some Torontonians were without power.
Try it in an electric vehicle. Parallel batteries without battery management circuitry are trouble. (and yes, I have built, owned, driven and maintained electric on-road vehicle)
Sure, but the "problems" are quite different. Parallel batteries will get "interesting" if a cell shorts or if there is a big difference in the age/size. A shorted or weak cell in a series connection will just limit the utility of the battery. A battery isolator will solve the problems with parallel batteries but it also wastes significant power.
A shorted cell certainly will hamper the function of the circuit. Without a battery isolator, it will draw *significant* power (as in: fire) and discharge the other battery. The voltages will equalize and that power is lost as heat.
In a series connection the, no power is lost to heating. The voltage drops by that cell but otherwise, little happens.
If you mean that you won't have a fire to tell you that something's wrong, OK.
Try pricing 6 volt L-16 AGM batteries.
I salvage dead UPS units all the time and most of them only need new batteries. I have a 1000 watt on the floor, a 750 on the counter, four
500's and a 350 running right now with several more I obtained that need batteries. I use the AGM batteries which have a higher capacity than the originals and fit in the same slot. I'm amazed at the folks who will trash the units when they only need new batteries. Of course I take the bad batteries to a recycler. My UPS units not only keep the computers and routers up when the power fails but keep my CFL and LED lights on for some time. I can always shut down the computer equipment and keep the lights on. ^_^TDD
I've seen several batteries explode and most were cause by stupid smokers using a cigaret lighter as a light source to see what the water level in a battery was. They are usually the same sort of idiots who refill a gas tank with a lit cigaret in their mouth. I've seen them standing in front of a huge, "NO SMOKING WITHIN 100 FEET" sign and light up a smoke. I really believe in natural selection but the idiots wind up taking innocent people with them. o_O
TDD
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