I am rubbish at this electrical stuff. And local vendors are rubbish at selling me stuff. An abridged version of the whole trying episode…
Last month Ian’s batteries finally died. And they died all together, too, as though stuck there in that dark powershed they had nothing to do but relate their suicide fantasies to one another until it finally all went horribly wrong. I assumed I could piece together the four best batteries and keep his fridge running for a while but it turned out there weren’t four best batteries.
Ian really splurged on those batteries – Rolls-Surrette L16s are not cheap – and they ran a fat fourteen years before giving up the ghost. You can get a lot of cycles out of deep-cycle batteries when you hardly ever cycle them deeply, as long as you also take care of the maintenance in the meantime. That’s the one advantage of a big battery bank over a small one. Anyway, those years of faithful service never really did him a lot of material good so he didn’t want to spend that kind of cash this time around. But he did want his electrical system to work, so he asked me to find out what eight new golf cart batteries would cost.
I called the vendor that sold me my own batteries four years ago, and he quoted me $450 each – which is exactly THREE TIMES what my batteries cost. That was shocking but I passed on the information to Ian. I also mentioned that the vendor didn’t have any in stock and was having a lot of shipping problems so he didn’t know when I might actually get batteries from him. I decided to keep looking. To expedite matters Ian actually transferred the money to my account – but I couldn’t believe it was really going to cost that much or take that long.
In the big town about 50 miles away there was a golf cart accessories place that supposedly had a whole pallet of Trojan T105s. Neighbor S said last time he bought them there they cost $165 each. That sounded a lot better – but nobody ever answered the phone there. Nobody ever responded to a voicemail there. As far as I was ever able to tell, nobody ever even worked there. Yeah, they’d cut their hours for the winter season, but come on.
Time was passing and this was getting really discouraging when this Tuesday afternoon I got a call from Neighbor S saying he had just discovered the existence of a store that sold batteries. Just batteries. Like, the name of the place was The Battery Store. And they also answered their telephone, as though someone actually came and unlocked the doors and engaged in commercial activity there. This was worth checking out so we made the long drive. And as simple as that…
…I had eight new batteries and could report not only progress but also a helluva refund to Ian.
Then came the next problem. I’ve mentioned before that I have a terrible time visualizing any electrical circuit more complex than simple series. Neighbor S even sketched the circuit for me – but if the batteries aren’t visually oriented exactly the way the sketch shows, I still can’t see it in my head. So it took me a while to get the thing working – and there were a few showers of sparks in the process. I really hate that. But finally this morning S was able to get me over my block, and as soon as I threw the switch on the inverter things started lighting up. In a good way, I mean.
Now I’m going to be visiting every morning for the next few days to see just how deep the cycles are going to be with these new but much smaller deep cycle batteries. These won’t have nearly the longevity of the old ones – but Ian’s Cave is still open for business again at last.
So whatd the batteries wind up costing per?
$160 plus tax, with the core charge waived on the promise of bringing them some dead batteries.
Part of the reason you had difficulty seeing the circuit was that you had to accommodate the lengths of the cables that you had, I suspect. That’s a straightforward two series strings in parallel, but one goes in the opposite direction physically. But this let’s you keep all the interconnects of equal length. Well done!
By the way, The Battery Store is a national chain. I bought my last set of Surrettes there (very last set as it turned out) and they had a good price for batteries that were in stock.
Are these the ones you bought? 105 AH seems pretty low, but if they work and hold up the loads at Ian’s, you did a good job.
Duracell Ultra BCI Group 31M 12V 105AH 650CCA Flooded Deep Cycle Marine & RV Battery – 0
Value for the Money
SLI31MDC
SLI31MDC Duracell Ultra BCI Group 31M 12V 105AH 650CCA Flooded Deep Cycle Marine & RV Battery
4.8 star rating
477 Reviews
149 dollars 99 cents
$149.99
Refundable Core Deposit: 27 dollars
+$27.00 Refundable Core Deposit
Price Plus Refundable Core: 176 dollars 99 cents
Price Plus Refundable Core: $176.99
(That is my local price in Michigan)
No, 105 AH would be way too small. I believe these are 210 AH. Duracell, though.
Did a diagram of your setup to get a better grasp of it. Two stacks of 4 batteries at 12 V each to result in 48 volts then tied in parallel. Wired correctly given the distances between terminals. Looks nice.
You are correct in wanting to keep a very close eye on them. What I have been reading online regarding Duracell brand deep cycle/marine is quite spotty, some folks do well and others have them listed as failing right outside the warranty window.
Hope this batch is top quality.
Terrapod, look closer. Those are six volt (3 cells). His system is 24V based.
Mal
Yeah, I can’t see the number of cells in the photo so assumed 12 V per unit.
Just divide my numbers by 2 😉
Going to pay close attention to what Joel reports they do, I am thinking of a similar setup for my workshop on the assumption we are heading for brownouts and blackouts given the people “in charge” of infrastructure and policy (sigh!).
You can always add on more batteries to the current string. Parallel each individual battery or a complete parallel string. Adding capacity is easy if you have the money.
Just decide before these current batteries have too many cycles on ’em…You don’t wanna mix old and new.