The importance of using GOOD batteries

[Tom C]

Hi TomC

I need to ask ! ! ! ! !

I will use a solar panel to drive the SG and the SG to charge the nicads, as I did over the weekend, (will now be forced to finish my 8 coiler)

Oops, under what conditions would radiant explode nicads? or are you just pulling my leg ! ouch !

Theunis

they dont like to be overcharged, they are much more sensitive than a lead acid battery...... lead acids boil, and if they are big enough you catch it before it boils dry, nicads come apart, heat up, leak cadmium all over..... ever seen a capacitor blow up from overcharging?

I overcharged a nicad pack for my R/C dune buggy one time, caught on fire stunk up the whole house crap all over the table and wall, destroyed the whole battery pack. sometimes a bad cell in a bank will heat up by itself it acts like a resistor or a dead short.

BE CAREFUL!!! wear safety glasses, have good venting, etc all the standard safety protocols apply.

Tom C

[Prinsloo]

TomC

Thanks for all the tips and warnings,

I intend to go-slow and get as much info on these cells as possible.

Just makes it easier with the guys giving feedback on their dealings/advice/experience with these bats.

Theunis

[Dave Wing]

Tom,

Are you talking about dry cell nicad's, or wet cell nicad's?

Dave Wing

[Tom C]

Tom,

Are you talking about dry cell nicad's, or wet cell nicad's?

Dave Wing

like these ones Tenergy 21002 One NiCd 7.2V 2200mAh Battery Pack for RC Cars they look like dry cell D batteries but junk comes out of them.... sticky wet gooey smelly....

Tom C

[Dave Wing]

Tom, Okay thanks. Yes I have had one explode right in front of me on one occasion, although it was contained in a drill pack battery so no mess.

Theunis, Just to let you know I have been charging flooded wet cell nicads on the SG to 16.3 plus volts, with no issues. I have two 120 AH - 12volt banks.

Dave Wing

[Prinsloo]

Dave

Thanks, for your time, how many cells do you have in a bank?

Any ideas why these nicads leveled out on 1.44 v, this was the first charge, they where/are all standing at 0.4v per cell when I started, maybe the solution separated out?

How many cells do you have in a bank ?

Can you post a photo or two of your bank, thanks.

Dave and what do you utilize them for,

Sorry for all the questions !

Theunis

[Prinsloo]

Hi Dave

1 more question, can you swap the Nicads from the back to the front (take the secondary and place it as a primary) on the SG or will they suffer the same faith as the LAB.

Thanks

Theunis

[Dave Wing]

Theunis,

I have 2banks of 10 cells... I use them on the SSG for primary and secondary batteries. With mine I am able to get them up to 16 volts plus. You will have to cycle, with a resistive load, if you cannot get the amp hours out of them as they are now.

Or you could try what you said, switching the front with the back. I know what everyone says about this but Peter L. has a post here about battery swapping. Directory:Bedini SG:Replications:PES:Sterling Allan:Lindemann Coaching - PESWiki

I know what others have said in the past, not to do this, as the batteries will just run out of energy. But I never have taken the swapping beyond a few times, let alone 15 times as Peter mentioned back in 2004. That is an old post so it could also be out of date.


Hope this helps,

Dave Wing

[Prinsloo]

Hi Dave

These specs for these battery recommend as high as 1.69 v /cell when equalizing, that is close at what you are getting on your cells.

I am still waiting for the stand for the cells, will then get them connected.

Thanks Dave can I ring your bell again if I have some questions?

Theunis

[lis_wang]

Hi All,

I wanted to recap on how important it is to use good batteries in your experiments. I think most people who are replicating and experimenting with the SSG Monopole Energizer spend more time on trying to get the machine to work properly than focussing on on the batteries they are using. This is why I think most people are not getting the results they should be getting.

It doesn't matter how good your machine is built or how well you wound your coil, matched the components or what your free spin time is IF you are not using good batteries! I have seen this over and over again on the bench - bad batteries = bad results, good batteries = good results!

So how do you know if you have a good battery or not? Here's a few tips:

1. Use only flooded lead acid batteries. Other battery types will work, but until you get good results with flooded LABs and fully understand how they work, what they like and don't like and what their charge and discharge curves look like don't try other battery types.
2. Size the battery to your setup, or more importantly, size your setup to your battery. This is something you will need to experiment with and get a feel for from experience. As a guide, the most basic bifilar SSG on a bike wheel rotor is good for a 3Ah motorcycle battery. The 8-filar bike wheel kit is good for a 13Ah lawn tractor battery. Anything bigger and you are looking at a very well built multi-coil system.
3. Get to know your battery. One of the first things you will want to do with a battery you haven't worked with is to develop a charge and discharge profile. There are tools on the market like the West Mountain Radio CBA, but you can also plot your own charts by manually recording voltage readings at regular intervals and plotting a chart in Excel. When discharging, you will want to know how healthy the battery is by load testing it. That is, load the battery at the C20 rate and calculate the Amp hours or Watt hours the battery can deliver. Repeated charge and load tests will give you a battery profile.
4. Never exceed the charge or discharge termination voltages. If you want to keep your battery, treat it nice. Search for the battery's specs and stick to them. As a guide, never discharge a starter battery below 12.2v or a true deep cycle below 10.5v. Conventional battery chargers or "quick" chargers will kill your battery by forcing current into them which causes heat which will warp the plates and shed the active material off the plates, eventually causing shorted cells.
5. Is that new battery really "new"? New batteries these days are getting worse and worse. They are designed for you to replace them every 3 years. The plates are thinner, they are not formed properly and the lead in them is of poor quality. Most batteries are already sulfated when you get them. The tip here is to run them through a few cycles until you start getting close to the rated capacity of the battery. Be especially cautious of dry charged batteries - my tests are showing that these usually need a lot of cycles to get them up to scratch.

Hope this helps...

John K.

Hi, John K.

Thank you so much for the battery information which I did not know before. I will make a 8 fillar bike wheel kit. I have bought two LAB, 12V, 7.2AH. Is that OK to use? Another question is how to develop a charge and discharge profile of battery? What is purpose for that? How to discharge a battery?

Thanks for your help.

[lis_wang]

This is an excellent thread. I have seen more people confused over the "Fluff" or surface charge and walk away.
My experience is that on the first charges with the SSG there is mostly just a surface charge. It may go well over 15 volts and level off, so I stop, let the battery rest a bit, and then discharge. At this point it would look as though the SSG performance is less than about 5% efficient as there is almost no real power in the battery. Then after several cycles Suddenly the battery will take forever to charge ( I believe this is where the plates are actually forming). Still making the SSG look extremely inefficient. this I call stage two. But the battery does begin to hold charge with a load. Then after a number of cycles everything begins to reverse. It begins to take a lot less time to charge and holds a charge for a much longer time. This is when I really begin to start seeing what my SSG is made of. I agree that this simple aspect has held many people back. It seems easy enough to understand now, but when new it really is a hard concept to grasp, I suppose it is because most are probably use to immediate gratification in our society these days.

I still don't say no to doorstops though as I am collecting lead for some alum experiments.....

Thank you John k, for this important thread!
Les

Hi, Les

How did you discharge battery? I want to know how to charge & discharge battery? Did you charge battery by using normal charger or SSG?

Thanks

[lis_wang]

Thanks Les,

You're absolutely correct. That is exactly what a sulfated lead-acid battery behaves like.

I think that the people who really take the time to learn about batteries and their behaviour by researching and experimenting with them will be a lot more successful at this than the people who don't. It does take time though.

I ruined heaps of batteries and thought that the technology didn't work when I didn't get the results I thought I should when I first started with this. I still do ruin some batteries and have some that won't come back. Until you learn what they want and what to expect you are going to ruin some batteries and you won't be able to recover some other batteries. That doesn't mean the technology doesn't work though. It just means you either have a crap battery or have more to learn.

As soon as people learn that it's all about the batteries and not the machine, the sooner they will get the results they want.

John K.

How to ruin a new battery and make it not able to be charged by using a normal charger?

[lis_wang]

Hi John K.,

I feel better reading this, as my heap only has 4 batteries on it. So far. It took me about 15 cycles to ruin 2 l&g batteries with my 5 filar, and as I gained proficiency in the art of destroying batteries I managed to ruin 2 more in only 5 cycles with my 8 filar, so saving myself 10 cycles.

They were all new EverStart batteries from Wal-mart and as they are probably coming from China I suspected the quality might not be great. So I got an 85ah Trojan true deep cycle and am trying that at the moment.

The question I have is what ruins the batteries? If you're staying within the c20 rate, and I was with both sets I ruined, then what happened to them? Do you have any tips on what to and what not to do, or insights into what causes them to go bad? I'd thought maybe because they are starter batteries and not so robust that the maybe they were being charged too hard and the lead sponge was coming off, but I'm just guessing. Suggestions?

thanks,

Robert

Dear Robert

How did you ruin a new LA battery?

[John_Koorn]

Hi John K

I have been reading past posts

Could you explain this a little more clearly because here it looks like that the ten coiler would only really charge a 130 ah deep cycle on the output side.

I am assuming then that a 130ah battery on the input is required as well.

Would these figures be based on a 5 hour charge rate do you think or would it be quicker?

Thanks John K in advance.

Let me look at this closer a 130ah battery on a c20 rate gives over 6 amps and to run a 10 coil unit 10 amps are required.

So to charge a 130ah battery on the back side I would need

2 X 130ah batteries on the c20 rate for the run battery right?

So I will need 2 batteries on the front and can only charge one 130ah batteries?

Can you correct this if I am wrong and help me understand where the extra energy is?

Mike

Hi Mike,

The bike wheel kit has smaller gauge wire on the coil. The 10 coiler, if you replicate JB's, has AWG18 on the coils. JB was able to charge 1800 Ah batteries. As you build bigger the gains are non-linear, so you can charge larger batteries with a comparatively smaller input.

John K.

[John_Koorn]

Hi, John K.

Thank you so much for the battery information which I did not know before. I will make a 8 fillar bike wheel kit. I have bought two LAB, 12V, 7.2AH. Is that OK to use? Another question is how to develop a charge and discharge profile of battery? What is purpose for that? How to discharge a battery?

Thanks for your help.

Hi lis,

the bike wheel kit is designed to charge a 13Ah flooded lead acid battery. I use a West Mountain Radio CBA unit. It allows you to monitor and chart the battery's charge curve and also load the battery down at a specified rate and chart it.

John K.