If anyone needs cheap batteries for an off-grid system, try asking my neighbour Lawrence Buchan 077 37308766. He has some nice Yuasa endurance batteries in 6-V blocks, 100Ah and 160 Ah sizes.
Yuasa batteries being landed at Scoraig
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nice email received:
From: Mike Allen
Subject: Re: A Wind Turbine Recipe Book
Date: 12 April 2013 10:53:18 BST
To: jytteI recieved the book yesterday and when it arrived I thought 'this isn't worth £12'.
But how wrong I was once I'd opened the envelope and settled down to read the contents with a cup of coffee. 3 hours later the coffee was stone cold and I was still reading the book.
Loads of info to be getting on with.
I'll email Hugh when my terbine is up and running with some pics.
Thanks a lot.
Michael.
Just wondering, Hugh, whether anyone you know has tried Nickle-Iron batteries. I’ve just written an article about batteries and these look pretty good. They’ve certainly been proven and the engineering reports corroborate the anecdotal evidence. They may be a bit less efficient than lead-acid but they tolerate abuse that would kill lead-acid batteries. After a good ten years of service, the electrolyte can be changed and the batteries will perform as well as they did when new.
Here’s a good site linked to some good engineering studies and to the Chinese source.
http://www.nickel-iron-battery.com/
I interviewed this guy and he’s a very enthusiastic Ni-Fe user, himself.
I tried nickel-cadmium a long time ago in the days when we used 12-volt light bulbs. My problem was with the range of voltage between charge and discharge. Bulbs blew on charge, and the light was very dim on discharge. I don’t know if nickel-iron has this problem. It’s not such an issue with modern sine-wave inverters but it still reflects a low efficiency.
Since then I have not used them although I have been involved with installations that used secondhand ones. By the way, the Northern Lighthouse Board are disposing of quite a few as they replace old diesel systems in their lighthouses around Scotland. Or this program may now be finished. Ni-Cd is a more toxic technology than Lead-acid, so these batteries may be expensive to dispose of.
I wonder why Ni-Fe batteries are not more widely used?
I guess that the up-front expense is one factor. Also, Excide bought the only surviving Ni-Fe manufacturer in the US, in the ’70s and shut it down shortly thereafter. Ni-Fe has virtually disappeared from our vocabulary but that’s no reflection on their quality.
Do you know if this is a one-time ‘call now to avoid disappointment’ type of situation, or does your neighbour have a steady supply of these second-hand batteries?
Those NiFe batteries look pretty interesting, it’s just sad that an industry to supply them is so dead compared to lead-acid.
Hi,
My other half is interested in all this alternative energy stuff, and I told him about your site,
does your neighbour still has second hand batteries available ?