> CH> BTW - do you know the average "usable capacity" (of an average
> CH> cycle) of an average 12 volt deep cycle battery I can obtain
> CH> easily? I need to estimate how many batteries I would need to
> CH> have 200-300 KW available (total, not per hour;-) to be used at
> CH> around 1.5-3KW/Hour. This should give me around five days
> CH> storage capacity, I believe. That is, If I could pull 10KW from
> CH> a battery before it no longer will run the inverter, I would
> CH> need 20-30 batteries. But I have no idea how much wattage I can
> CH> drain from an average deep cycle battery.
 
Tell you what, Roy. This gentleman's eyes are much bigger than his
stomach (so to speak).
 
Let me explain. This Sunday I installed 4 brand new car batteries in
my UPS system for my computer. They are in parallel with 8 6volt
Telco UPS batteries. Those are the ones I talked about before. So I
decided it might be a good idea to work those 4 new batteries a bit
to break them in and anyway figured it would be interesting to see
how long they would run the load which consisted of my computer and
a VCR. It ran them for 30 hours before the low battery light came on
and I plugged the unit back into the wall at that time. The batteries
weren't very deeply discharged at that point. They would have been
taken down to about 10.6 volts gradually over the 30 hours. It will
take the UPS something like 50 to 75 hours to recharge the batteries
to full charge.
 
Now then, if my big UPS system with all 12 batteries on it can only
run a VCR and a computer (no monitor) for 30 hours then I'd sure
hate to think about buying the number of batteries he's going to
need to deliver the kind of power he's talking about. I'd be willing
to bet he couldn't get that kind of power out of a hundred batteries.
And if he discharged them deeply then he'd likely be looking at
getting them back up to full charge about the time he gets ready
to go vote for Klinton's replacement. (;-0
 
Like I said, I think his eyes are bigger than his stomach. (:-0
 
Bill Bauer
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