New consulting relationship with GreenTecAuto begins
What actually goes wrong with the batteries????
A look at todays Hybrid and EV battery packs
Battery packs exposed
Keeping Warm In New England
Plugging into the SUN
50A 600VAC transfer relay
AC source transfer relay is finished
Adding some new batteries
All weather dish movers
Almost ready to wire things up
Assembling the parts for the load manager
Beating on the system/ use it or loose it
Better solar absorber plate
Better Specific gravity instrument
bringing in the batteries
Burgers are better
California or bust! Solar modified mobility scooter
Canning pot
canning season is here again
Concentrate the heat test #4
Connecting battery bank #2
Cooking some hotdogs
Crappy luck with the weather
Designing a simpler and lower cost solar tracking amplifier
Equilizing the batteries
Everything is working again.
Finally installed
Finally nearing completion of the battery enclosure
multytracker 1
First test
Getting a BIG solar plug
Getting some experience with DC
Getting started on the final wiring
Getting too old to be slinging 120 lb batterys into the rack
Giving the batteries a workout
Hot water tank as energy storage component test 1
Hot water test 2
Identifing the wires, and mounting the Inverter panel
Insulated hibachi reaches baking temperatures
keeping the head cool
keeping warm.
Sue Dabrowski (my better half) makes some solar eggs
Lightning the super fast EV minibike
Looking the data
Main structure of battery rack is finished
Making some stewed tomatoes
making the connection to the existing wiring
making the DC pos buss bars
More improvements to the dish
Multy purpose tracker 1
New tracking amplifier
No more throw away batteries please
Not very encouraging test # 3
Old Rear projection TV lens makes solar furnace
power distribution box fabrication
preparing to connect the big loads
Reading Specific Gravity accurately
running off grid all day
Running on batteries
Second test
Snow melt prep for test 2
Snow melt test one A close look at the process
solar cell adhesion test #1
Solar cells on my Insight ????
Solar cooker gets some wheels
Solar cookout in 20 degree weather
Solarfest 2013
Solarfest is next weekend so it is time to tweak the tools
Solar powered wood burner X-Y stage
Solar powered wood burner focus and lens assembly
Solar teaching toys
Solar tracking with no electronics" Solar Puppet"
Starting the rewiring
The 7 foot circle of sunlight moves to rear deck.
the final high current connections
the finished load center and charge controller connections
the heavy lifters arrive
The new batteries are finally installed and working
The snow is returning???
The snow keeps on coming, need to figure out a good way to keep the panels clear
The sun is dropping 1KW/SQ meter
The transfer relay is wired in and working.
Tracking the sun Big Time
Mikey's solar panel snow sweeper
Vertical and horizontal trackers installed, drive wheel controls
Very interesting heating element
Who pulled the plug?
Wood burning art ?
Yuck, more snow
Making a small solar concentrator
Building MIMA and the plug in adapters
Converting a telephone truck to electric
DIY dual pulse Capacitor Discharge Spotwelder
Chevy Bolt EV joins the family
Getting in shape while making electricity
Retirement
Replacing gasoline with solar electric lawn equipment
What is Genesis One?
How to stop the aging process DIY
MIMA Install Day 2005 a Big Success!
Building a hybrid car grid charger
Tapping into the Wind
Expanding MIMA with the Distribution board ( users projects )

Adding some new batteries

Adding some new batteries
increasing my battery storage

After living with the system for several months,it was clear than I was not going to realize the full potential of the system with the 16 trojan T105 golf cart batteries.
After doing some research into the most bang for the buck, I settled on the trojan L16RE2V 2 V cells. They are rated at 1100 AH @ the 20 hr rate, compare to the golf cart batteries which are 220AH.
Trojan just introduced in march what it calls its Smart Carbon construction for Renewable energy batteries. This is supposed to add 15% to the battery life when used in RE applications.

The problem with buying big batteries is getting them home, so a big part of my choice was that a local battery supplier had 24 of these batteries in stock, and was willing to deliver them for free. Only catch was that they bought them before Trojan
introduced their smart carbon technology, so they were in a position to want to get rid of the old stock. The street price of the batteries is $364 each, but they let me have them for $300 each,so the 15% possible life improvement of the new smart carbon batteries was given to me as a discount, and hopefully by careful maintenance I can get some good life out of them.
An important thing to note here, is the construction of the cells.
The L16RE batteries come in a 330AH 6V version, or a 1100Ah 2V version. The case is exactly the same, and the battery still has 3 cells, the difference is that the inner cells are either series or parallel. The down side is that you have three cells to check and maintain even though it is a 2V cell. Turns out that they make an Industrial battery of 1500AH that is a single cell, but that cost close to $1000 each.
Time will tell if I made the best purchase. Now I need to build a big battery box with vents that will house all of the batteries.