WAY Cool New Battery Technology

[camaraderie]

Found this article by Nigel Calder through another forum and thought you would all be interested in a house bank that could be completely discharged...then charged at THREE to SIX Times its' amphour capacity in amps...and 100% charged in THIRTY MINUTES!!

Imagine a 100amp hour a day "budget" with a 500 AH bank. Tha means you could go 5 days without running your engine....then run it for a half hour and do it all over again!!

Best of all....this is NOT experimental...it is here now. The savings in fuel and engine wear should offsett the premium price very quickly...and the construction apparently has significantly longer cycle life as well. If you live on the hook or plan to...this is a real breakthrough...with more to come!

Read it here under "Breakthrough" in the table of contents. Click on the page to zoom in.
http://www.proboat-digital.com/proboat/20080203/

[Valiente]

Excellent find, Cam. I will follow this us with more research.

[camaraderie]

Val...check this out.
http://www.odysseybatteries.com/files/techbook.pdf

their "model 2250" battery is 1/2 the size of an 8D both in measurement and output. So 2 of the 2250 would fit in an 8d space. The tech specs are exciting but check out figure #7 in the link. This clearly shows that charging at 3x the rated amp hours gets you 100% in 30 minutes. Plus they are claiming 400 cycles from COMPLETELY discharged to 11.6Volts...500 cycles if you go only 80% discharged. This is the equivilent of 1000 cycles on a standard AGM or Flooded that can only go to 50% without shortening life cycle significantly.
Think about this:
With my 200 amp hour a day habit...I spent about 2 hours a day in charging mode on my 1000 amp hour bank...and spent about 2 gallons of fuel.
With these batteries I could stay off the grid for 5 days...spend 1/2 gallon of fuel with a DC generator...and also would reduce my ANNUAL engine hours from 730 to 36.5...and annual fuel use from 730 gallons to 36.5...saving rougly $2100 annually on fuel alone!!
The equivilent of an 8D costs $800...so that would be $3200 bucks for 1000amphours....so in about 18 months...the batteries would pay for themselves in fuel savings alone...to say nothing of reduced engine wear and maintenance and hundreds of extra cycles. At my use rate...they should last for 5.5 years of FULL discharges!!
It really changes the whole battery equation for full time cruisers. I wish was outfitting a boat right now!!

[Sapperwhite]

thanks cam, i've been looking hard at my pitiful little bank.

[camaraderie]

Actually...I've been looking at the math...and while I COULD charge my bank in 30 minutes...I'd need a 44KW generator to do it! (3000 amps at 14.7 volts) so I guess I might be better off downsizing the bank size and saving some money and just charging a bit more often. Fun to play with the options since you can essentially also just buy half the battery amp hours you would otherwise need and go at it that way!

[PBzeer]

I looked at Odyessy batteries last year before I went with AGM's. Thought they were too new to the market to feel confident in them, in spite of their military use.

[max-on]

Cam, you may find interesting the other 'cutting edge' things Nigel is doing to his new Malo 46, here is a link to his Blog: http://www.maloyachts.se/Default.aspx?tabid=195

There are a few articles in Professional Boatbuilder from Oct-Jan wherein he discusses things in more detail.

[teshannon]

Originally Posted by camaraderie

Val...check this out.
http://www.odysseybatteries.com/files/techbook.pdf

their "model 2250" battery is 1/2 the size of an 8D both in measurement and output. So 2 of the 2250 would fit in an 8d space. The tech specs are exciting but check out figure #7 in the link. This clearly shows that charging at 3x the rated amp hours gets you 100% in 30 minutes. Plus they are claiming 400 cycles from COMPLETELY discharged to 11.6Volts...500 cycles if you go only 80% discharged. This is the equivilent of 1000 cycles on a standard AGM or Flooded that can only go to 50% without shortening life cycle significantly.
Think about this:
With my 200 amp hour a day habit...I spent about 2 hours a day in charging mode on my 1000 amp hour bank...and spent about 2 gallons of fuel.
With these batteries I could stay off the grid for 5 days...spend 1/2 gallon of fuel with a DC generator...and also would reduce my ANNUAL engine hours from 730 to 36.5...and annual fuel use from 730 gallons to 36.5...saving rougly $2100 annually on fuel alone!!
The equivilent of an 8D costs $800...so that would be $3200 bucks for 1000amphours....so in about 18 months...the batteries would pay for themselves in fuel savings alone...to say nothing of reduced engine wear and maintenance and hundreds of extra cycles. At my use rate...they should last for 5.5 years of FULL discharges!!
It really changes the whole battery equation for full time cruisers. I wish was outfitting a boat right now!!

Hey, you could outfit the RV.

[JohnRPollard]

Cam, Thanks for the link to the article.

I had posted a link to the Odyssey webpage a couple months ago ( Lifeline battery sources ) in the hope of eliciting comments from some of the folks who study battery technology. I'll be following this thread to see what the gurus think....

[camaraderie]

Max...thanks for the link. I have some reading to do!

TE...don't think I haven't had that thought!!

JohnR...Yeah...I had looked at them over a year ago too...but just looked at their promotional sheets. Since they don't market to the marine market, the batteries simply looked like very rugged AGM's at exorbitant prices as the amp hours are nothing special and they don't get real specific about DEEP discharge, unique technology and "30 minute" charging. Only when I dug into the spec sheets download did I see what Calder was so excited about. The "guru" sure isn't resting on his laurels as he continues to explore the cutting edge of new tech!