Serious question:
If lead-acid batteries aren't good for deep-cycle use, then why do most UPSes use them? Do they use a special lead-acid design that's actually ok with deep discharges?
(I'm trying to figure out how to put together a battery-driven portable power-system, at least in theory.)
@woozle ideally the batteries of an UPS do less than a dozen circles in theire entire life, maybe it's that.
In case you are going to buy lead-acid batteries: the common car batteries are not good for UPSes because they are optimized for lots of amps for only a short time.
@Gregor Right, that's what I'm trying to avoid. I want something that can be discharged most of the way down more than a few dozen times -- equivalent to a laptop or cellphone battery.
I was aware that lead-acid batteries are bad for this, but that led me to wonder why they use them in UPSs if so.
I guess most people don't have as many power-outages as we do?
@woozle ooops, forgot tag in @rysiek as you had in your DM.
So people say "discharge cycles are bad" but that's a generalization. Buy a good battery and size it correctly so, in your application, you keep your cycles from 0% DoD to no more than 50% DoD and you can get many many years out of a battery, etc.
You can still use that last 50% capacity in an emergency, but plan to not use it during normal operation.
@woozle @rysiek E.g., if you are running a daily charge-discharge cycle that uses up 100 Ah of capacity, put 200 Ah or more of good deep-cycle lead acid in there and it should be good for 4 or 5 years. Etc. A car battery (optimized for cost and peak current) would prob be toast within a year.
Things that make LA batteries mad: overcharging, repeated very deep discharge, prolonged extreme heat, freezing the electrolyte
@woozle @rysiek Avoiding overcharging means a tolerably decent multi-stage battery charger that's configured correctly. E.g., running an equalize cycle every 6 months (or as recommended by mfg) can greatly increase the life of a flooded battery. But you must never configure your charger to run an equalize cycle on a sealed battery (it'll boil off electrolyte that you can't replace!). Etc.
But, in the end, a decent three-stage battery charger and a decent AGM lead-acid is simple and reliable.
@rysiek You're welcome. Hopefully this shows:
1. good system design always starts with sizing your loads.
2. any watts you can shave off your loads have a really outsized impact on your system size, cost, etc. 1 extra load Ah is 1 Ah of charging source, wire, breakers, etc., and at least 2 Ah of battery (more because you need ride-out capacity!)
If anyone has questions on figuring out system sizing, I'm happy to talk. I'm not an installer by trade but I'm neck-deep in this stuff all day.
@woozle @rysiek Good question! DoD looks tough but the math ends up being pretty simple; it's just difficult at first to grasp the terms, etc. "days" as an example time unit here:
load_Ah_per_day = load_amps * load_on_hours_per_day
battery_Ah = load_Ah_per_day * num_days_without_charging / (1 - max_DoD)
Then, as you suspect, you may add a small multiplier if you're in a cold environ, want to factor in performance at year 5, etc. Battery mfg data sheets will have clear curves for that.
@jond @woozle @rysiek it's worth checking out 'lead-carbon' batteries, which are still fundamentally lead-acid batteries, with some fancy graphite addition which gives really nice discharge/cycle characteristics. A solar farm near by me installed a couple shipping containers full of them 2 years ago, so they seem to be commercially available.
Alternatively, there is an endless supply of used 18650 Li-ion cells in thrown away battery packs where only one cell is bad.
@jond
I'd like to add one bit from the UPS point of view, really good temperature management can extend lifetime a couple of years. Replacing batteries every 6-7 years instead of 4-5 is probably a big enough cost saving worth keeping the UPS room at 21° instead of letting it wobble up towards 25-27°.
@woozle @rysiek
@woozle @maswan @rysiek Colder temps reduce available capacity but improve lifetime*. Good rule of thumb is every +10 C halves a battery's life. Specs are usually given at 20 C.
Batteries do not like freezing, but a charged battery has a lower freezing point (more solute in the water!) than a dead battery, so LA mfgrs will say, e.g., "below 0 C, keep state of charge > 50%"
* if the reduced capacity means you have to go to higher DoD, lifetime gains can easily be nullified by the harder use!
@woozle @maswan @rysiek For some clear curves, see something like the "SAGM 12 135" PDF link here: https://www.trojanbattery.com/products/solar-agm/
that shows % capacity available over temperature, etc
@meena @woozle I've dealt with NIB very little. It's an interesting tech but, as always, the devils are in the implementation and uptake. :(
At a NABCEP conference in like 2014 (?) I was just a couple booths down from the Aquion folks. That was my first chance to talk with people on the manufacturing and shipping side of a NIB operation. They were up front about the pros and cons of NIB but their op ran out of money. The tech is a tough sell right now.
@woozle Deep-cycle lead acid typically means something like 1500+ cycles to 50% depth-of-discharge. Thicker lead plates, wider plate spacing, putting some Sb or Ca in the lead mix, etc. They have lower peak current compared to a car battery but can survive *much* more use.
Lifetime num cycles tends to go linearly with DoD to a point: draining 20% of capacity before recharging might yield 4000 cycles; 40%, 2000 cycles, but beyond 50% DoD the battery typ wears out much faster.