Best battery chemistry/brand for warmer area/building

[mike_littlerock]

I have two systems now and both are for an off-grid farm. One system's controller and batteries are in a metal shipping container and the other system has its parts in my well house.. neither building is air-conditioned and this is all located in the south (Arkansas).. I am wondering what the best battery types/chemistry/brand would be.. or equally important what i should avoid at all costs.

 

[Max234]

I am assembling a ~2400 watt hour pack from 18650 batteries, and you save a ton of cash but it is a bit more technical than wireing up larger cells, or completed packs. Battery hookup.com is one name that comes to mind as well as second life storage, and alot of youtube channels like david poz. I got a load of laptop batteries that i am going to dig into in the next day or two. This is my two cents since lithium ion battery packs are often $1000+ when the given amount of materials might be a hundred dollars for laptop battery lots of ebay and a hundred say for opus bt 3100's to discharge test the batteries, plus 8 gauge copper wire, and around 28 gauge fuse wire and cell holders. so all in maybe like $300 for a 6s pack of around 360 cells, and a bit more than 2400 watt hours. You can also look up the manufacture date and what not just google 18650 lookup. They are supposed to last about 20 years but they lose alot of capacity, around 5-8 years old seems to be the sweet spot as to what is availabel cheaply and still workable. I bought a bunch of these salvage 20 cell packs from batteryhookup. They were mostly the 14 year old red sanyos with about 1000 ma, which is shit. About 20% were 6 year old pink samsungs with on average about 2400ma. Do alot of research on it !!! If i had to do it over i would just buy the modem packs that battery hookup sells, its a pain in the ass to test and vet a bunch of cells whose age and history are suspect. Though if i get a high return rate of good (>1500ma) cells in this ebay laptop battery lot, i will have changed my tune.

 

[mike_littlerock]

so that answer basically was a plug for a battery sales site and was in no way related to my question.. Thanks?

 

[Elevation]

WOW ?? I am a newbie here, but my research indicates that BattleBorn Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries 12volt 100 amp hour are the best. $949.00 from BattleBorn and the same from Amazon. Didn't check shipping $$ ? Yessir they are expensive, very long life and near 100% Ah available.
Second, I went with AGM. (not cheap either). Advantage of AGM over wet lead acid is no mandatory venting. I might mention that wet acid batteries produce hydrogen gas which can produce a flame speed of 3000 feet per second. (yessir explosion)!! Wet lead acid are the cheapest. Keep in mind that AGM and wet lead acid can only be pulled down 50%, if you want them to last. In my case. I have 6 AGM's = 600Ah X 50%. I could have accomplished the same thing with 3 BattleBorn's.
Now... You are working on a well house and a shipping container. I am working on a fifth wheel RV. A noted different set of circumstances / requirements. I can tell you the original wet acid batteries installed by the RV manufacturer are in sealed battery boxes vented from the bottom with outside fresh air and vented from the top with flexible hoses to an outside vent. Venting is uphill. Hydrogen gas is much lighter than air. Also it would be good to try to avoid ignition sources in the same space as your wet acid batteries.
Most of this information is readily available in Will's book and website. I read both. (good stuff) Oooh, links to batteries are on Will's website also.
I hope this was helpfull.
If I had it to over again, I would use BattleBorns. But I am not working on a wellhouse on a farm.
The other gorilla in this room is a well pump draws a lot of power. 240 V ?, 120V ?, How many amps? run time?

 

[mike_littlerock]

I actually went with a well pump that is designed for solar.. a normal residential well pump is certainly a power hog. Basically I have a power directed to the charge controller as well as directly to the pump control box. It will monitor the power and when it sees enough power available (right from the panels) it will pump. I have a 525 gallon holding tank in the wellhouse and the pump manufacturer also has a float valve available. So, enough power and the float indicating the tank is not full.. pumps away happily. Since I am just dealing with low-pressure gravity fed system, I have to use ball valves, so i just have a raspberry pi and motor hat taking care of the valve control. (residential sprinkler controllers use the water pressure as an assist to open/close valves. Most of those want at least 40PSI to function)

 

[Elevation]

While I don't believe that is what your talking about. Since you mentioned gravity feed. It would take about 92.25 feet of elevation head to get your 40psi and more elevation (friction loss) with the valves open. ?
Sounds likes good plan... Now how many watt hours do you need for how long?
FYI; I bought a meter on Amazon that measures kilowatts over time. 120volt residential plug to put in line. 15 amp plug. About $25.00. I measured my residential refrigerator in my RV. Kilowatt /hours used over so many days. A handy meter.

 

[mike_littlerock]

@Elevation yes. already did that math. my wellhouse is at the top of the ridge over my grapes so its perhaps 10'-30' above. the pressure works well for the system as designed.
My main question is about battery performance and life in a hot building. I do not know exactly how hot they get. (data logger on the way) but it is out in the Arkansas summer sun so it's warm. I think I saw 135F as the top limit for LiPo..
I am trying to limit my AC loads. I do have an inverter in one of the setups that I use to run a power tool from time to time but the day to day is mostly DC for the well-pump, and the IoT stuff that's all at various DC voltages. I originally put in a bank of 4 SLA batteries I guess 3-4 years ago and I plan to upgrade that in the next few months. I have looked at some of Will's designs on YouTube videos but I recall hearing something in those videos about not working well in "hotter" locations. relative terms like "hot" are fun to deal with, so I am trying to eliminate variables by logging temp to know my actuals, and also trying to understand relative limits on various battery chemistries.

 

[Prefersdirt]

Our well house has a large underground section as well (down where the pump actually is). Could you put the batteries below ground to help keep things cooler?

Or put a small vent fan near the roof to blow the hot air out and pull cool air in from ground level across the batteries?

I can't answer the best for hot environment question, but sharing what I could do to help keep them cool in southern Indiana.

 

[Elevation]

Well now, that’s an idea. Even if below grade isn’t practical. There are design principles, sunshine on the well house walls will create a lot radiant heat buildup. First shade the wall with a long roof overhang or soffit. Make the wall reflective ie... shiny tin, or white. Sherwin Williams makes a radiant barrier paint. If you’re going to use the aluminum foil coated insulation or OSB/plywood, don’t put your weather skin against it. ie.. hardie plank, tin, T-11. It greatly diminishes the effectiveness , leave a couple inch air gap. The radiant energy is reflected back from the shiny surface so letting that heat rise out of the walls is efficient. Arrange your outside skin to allow air to be pulled in from the bottom and vent out the roof.
A turbine vent at the peak of the roof or a continuous ridge vent. I have a continuous ridge vent on my house with many many soffit vents. I had to retrofit there are continuous soffit vents as well. The wall thing is called vent skinning.
HOT AIR NATURALLY RISES. Let it without expending any energy. No power vents. The coolest place in structure fire is on the floor.
Also batteries don’t like concrete. Ideally a product like Dri-Deck works great. Keeps them drier and cooler. You’re also in Arkansas and batteries don’t like freezing nor your water well. So mount your turbine vent so all this natural ventilation can be shut down when freezing weather occurs. The additional insulation and wind proofing will be helpful in cold weather.
Just ideas. Pick what you want.