wrote

Now that I see all of this, I wonder if perhaps in the long term, AGM
batteries are really about the same cost as the more dangerous and
unreliable flooded batteries.

You may disagree.

The electrical system specialists who did the final design and engineering
for my 81 foot research vessel do agree and said pretty much just what you
did. They do both land based emergency power systems for things like phone
company switching centers and sophisticated vessel systems. Pretty
knowledgeable guys.

According to them, you didn't even need to factor in the safety of AGM's to
justify their use.

--
Roger Long

"Roger Long" wrote:

wrote

Now that I see all of this, I wonder if perhaps in the long term, AGM
batteries are really about the same cost as the more dangerous and
unreliable flooded batteries.

You may disagree.

The electrical system specialists who did the final design and engineering
for my 81 foot research vessel do agree and said pretty much just what you
did. They do both land based emergency power systems for things like phone
company switching centers and sophisticated vessel systems. Pretty
knowledgeable guys.

According to them, you didn't even need to factor in the safety of AGM's to
justify their use.

Bob converted a car to run on batteries. He had 18 of them. AGMs
were significantly more expensive and didn't last any longer Same
with the boat - I think we have two battery banks - 96 amp hours or
something like that. And the AGM batteries (I have heard) have much
more tricky charging requirements. Now maybe that has changed in the
past 10 years - probably so. And if we were setting up the system
now, we might do it with AGM batteries. But we are not, so we won't.

If they had special charging requirments and this was 10 years ago, they
were probably gel cells with are different and often confused with AGM's.

--
Roger Long

"Roger Long" wrote:

If they had special charging requirments and this was 10 years ago, they
were probably gel cells with are different and often confused with AGM's.

Whatever. When Bob was converting his car to electric power, he did
the research and since he's an electrical engineer I don't have any
reason to second guess him, as I am definitely NOT a physical science
type person.

I used to do forklift (powered industrial truck) inspections and they
had all kinds of rules for charging the batteries, but we had no way
to check whether there was enough ventilation or not. I was also told
by someone that I needed an airtight ventilated box for our batteries.
Which is just silly. So I tend to discount a lot of what is written
about electrical stuff and just go with what Bob wants to do.