HOW TO INCREASE THE CAPACITY OF YOUR BATTERIES BY 30 PERCENT, WITHOUT KNOWING ANY CHEMISTRY AND WITHOUT CHANGING BATTERIES OR MANUFACTURERS

摘要

This paper describes some of the author's six years of research on using deep charge/discharge cycling of batteries to increase their capacity by ten to sixty percent. Photovoltaic systems can run loads reliably at any time, only if there is a large enough battery. System designers rely on manufacturers' data to size the battery bank. Since 1996, Segal's Solar Systems has done research on many different manufacturers' batteries, both flooded and gelled. This research has shown that brand new batteries usually deliver only 80 to 90 percent of their stated capacity. Therefore proper system design and sizing can still lead to system blackouts and customer aggravation. Proper repeated deep cycling of batteries, before installation, can form the battery's plates and bring them up to their full capacity, thus preventing this problem. Additional tests have shown that lead-acid batteries, which have failed prematurely, sometimes failed because of a single low-capacity cell. Repeated deep cycling of the entire battery can sometimes recover this weak cell. This does NOT appear to be classic memory.