Maybe a little late to suggest it but how about some dry wall installed to seal the area better and add mass for a heat sink.TomC
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Hi bill one of the things that comes to mind is for the winter months push the batteries close together and reduce air exposure. The charge discharge cycling will generate heat so no air spaces will definitely help and cost nothing. Space them in the spring to avoid overheating.
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Bill I have set up several solar systems. One with 16 L16 batterys. On that I met code with a 1" tube sloaped up and out. 1/4" should work for your system as long as it goes out 2 or 3 feet higher than your batteries and has no sags to make an air pocket. A fan for hydrogen would not be good unless you are shure it cant spark (brushes). There are battery caps for solar that stop water loss. They recombine the oxygen and hydrogen and return them as water. That should help to.
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A PREDICTION OF THE FUTURE IN 15 YEARS OR LESS
This is about 30 minutes long and is a presentation that starts out very slow. It does present some very interesting conclusions, but to appreciate the conclusions, you have to hear his entire presentation.
http://bit.ly/2iwdFzQ
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Tom, thatās very interesting, but I just couldnāt help thinking: What about food and clean water?
Very interesting. I think he is right about most of it. He is over looking the issues of battery life. I think the lithium ion technology has some serious cycle life issues that will limit how it developes. But the solar argument is a good one I know where I am it is basically break even now and I am trying to figure out how to setup off grid.
The cars I can see working for cities but us country people will need them it would take too long for a car to find most of us I think. I also think there are just too many equipment breakdowns in farming for fully automated farming. Atleast the old school small scale stuff. I canāt see a hay bailer which would be able to bale hay for a day by itself.
But a great talk and some very fascinating points.
I think food and water would be a separate presentation, along with housing, jobs, long distance travel, and even world affairs, if anyone can predict that. This was pretty much directed on local transportation and how it will change. I didnāt realize Tesla was out of the experimental stage and into serious production. TomC
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Thank you both for your comments. I didnāt know how others would take this post. He does start out slow.
Dan to your comments; the lithium ion batteries do have problems, but think how new that design is. It or something related to it will be improved. If I understood correctly, in the Tesla, the battery is a modular battery that has 7,000 replaceable units. Farming: Equipment has changed dramatically already. Hardly anyone bales hay or picks corn. They have a big machine that chops hay and blows it into open box semitrailers and the same machine combines the corn and blows it into simiās. Tractors out west are run on GPS. Fertilizer is spread by what is needed and directed by GPS. Milking cows is done in automated parlors. I went through on that milks 2000 cows a day four times a day. The cow steps on to a carousel and as it goes around the cow is milked and she steps off. The milk goes directly into a pipe line, is weighed, tested, and on to the tanker to be taken to the dairy. I could go on and on about how farming has changed since I bought my farm. On the cars; you have a point. But out in the back country we have room for them so we might have small vehicles that could be used to take us to park and ride station, where we could get into the system. Just thoughts. TomC
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Iāll have to watch it all soon. I think too much is being emphasis is being put on lithium these days. I would love to get my hands on one of these bad boys here http://aquionenergy.com/homeowners/aspen-home-battery-storage/#Aspen_48S_Battery
Expensive right now but they should be cheap to make and of common materials .
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I agree the salt water battery looks very interesting for many reasons not least of which is the 100 percent discharge.
I have done the grass (about 12 years) and corn (about 30 years) silage. Never again here. That looks great till you see the run off pollute your water supply. Took about 15 years to get the ground water back where you could drink it again. Square bales and small scale will always have a place. My fields are really too small for that modern equipment.
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I feel good when I read stories about how change will improve my life.
But I feel like hiding in the basement when I remember how completely wrong everyone was about great things to come in my youth.
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They arenāt really into large scale production yet. They did sell 76k cars last year, but they are still a really small company as far as automakers go. They just put their gigafactory into production and I think they are ramping things up production there. They supposedly will have their Model 3 out by the end of the year and they will try to sell over 100k of those the first year.
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I am very impressed with any company that can get into the auto industry from scratch like Tesla has. Granted they have lost tons of money and it is only a few very rich people that keep them afloat but it is very impressive to me that one if the big guys hasnāt just bought them up.
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The potential density of lithium is a lot higher. It is important for automobiles and portable computers/phones. Thus they can reduce the overall component cost because they have a far bigger market to sell to. The home storage market is still pretty pricey.
I donāt know if you can make those or not. They typically use a lot of specialized materials. There is another company that is using an iron oxide flow battery. (http://www.essinc.com/ ) that you might be able to make as well.
Then the next generation lion are getting silicon and graphene into the batteries, and there are a few different lion battery chemistries. There is a LOT going on in storage right now as all the automakers are starting to shift towards them as worldwide demand is growing fairly rapidly. US sales for plugin hybrids and all electrics was almost 160k cars last year over 1% of the market. (pure hybrids are about 2% of the market)
I suspect within 5 years we will see double the density of lion which should help to lower prices as you need fewer materials. Samsung more or less just announced that by 2021ā¦ ( http://www.samsungsdi.com/sdi-news/1502.html?pageIndex=1&idx=1502 ) but I doubt they are the only ones. LG and Panasonic are the two major players in the US industry right now (although only like 20% of the world market now. China went by everyone in EVs and renewable energy capacity this year.)
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I find it hard to argue with you Sean. Lithium is growing exponentially with different chemistries every 6 months. Maybe they will all scale up. I still think the more passive type batteries will rule standby storage. I am hoping (maybe even hopeful) for a lead acid replacement in the not so distant future. All the lithium development talk seems to be about a better transportation battery with storage mentioned as an afterthought. Time will tell. There is no denying we live in interesting times.
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Probably over half of the utility scale storage is Lion. AES and a few other companies will sell you a storage containers full of them as a turnkey system. The levelized cost of energy for solar + storage is at 82/mwh, which is in the range combined cycle natural gas for grid regulation.
In reality, even though I donāt think lion tech is quite as good as some others, they are winning on price. GM paid 600/kw for the original Volt battery and they are paying 145/kw for the Bolt.
We talk about cars a lot, but typically batteries go from cells to cars to utility. Cell phones donāt have nearly as stringent rules as cars do, and Utilities tend to stay away from unproven technology and unproven companies.
Tesla is also into utility scale storage, and at one point was the largest supplier in California. California has a storage requirement for utilities so they are scrambling to install storage. like 3 gw total I think by llke 2022. There are a couple of other states with requirements, and then the California ISO has expanded their real time market based system into parts of most of the western states and they have a storage requirement as well.
As far as Lead Acid batteries go. They are going to be hard to replace. First is they work in hot and cold temps, and they can take abuse. Then you have have other cell chemistries, but they have higher voltages per cell so getting within the parameters of the nominal voltages to use with legacy equipment is a bit trickier. If you donāt use legacy equipment, then you are using a new design which costs moreā¦ 
Sean I get why the technology follows the cell phone to car to grid path it is where the money has been spent for research. But it over looks the fact that moving systems care about power density first and for most. But home based systems or grid attached systems really care about cycle life of the battery and temperature stability year round. Just different markets.
That is why I agree lead acid is currently the best for home usage and why I really wonder about the salt water batteries.
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The cycle life of lead acid is actually lower then the lion batteries. It is 300-400 vs 400-1200 for lion batteries. Lead acid also off-gases so you need proper ventilation.
From googleads. the Outback Power EnergyCell 800RE-24 High Capacity 24V Battery System is $4800, so roughly 19kw. The Tesla powerwall is 13.5kw for 5500 and has a built in inverter.
The cycle life of the lead acid system is 1800 but only to 50% discharge. so really it is a 9.5/kw system compared to the powerwall which allows 100% discharge of the 13.5kw. The powerwall does have a cycle life, but it also comes with a 10 year warranty, and kind of like the Lead Acid equivalent, they added extra batteries to compensate for depth of discharge to get the longer life. (they also have over/under protection circuits, and a heating/cooling system for extra protection, which could also help the Lead Acid array but it isnāt included.)
To me, it looks like it ends up to be cheaper to get the powerwall then the lead acid equivalent, which isnāt what I was expecting to say.
Only fault I see in your numbers is you are using an advanced glass Mat battery bank for the comparison not sure if you did this on purpose or not. Lead acid will give you more capacity and more cycles for less money. Then there is the fact that tesla has not made a cent on anything it has sold to date so itās true pricing long term is a huge question mark.
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I just took the only ad that popped up with the search I did. There is a -reason- why they are used by one of the leading solar inverter manufacturers, which is most likely lower internal resistance so you get better round trip efficiency, and faster charging rates. I am guessing they typically last longer too.
From battery university.com
Advantages
-Spill-proof through acid encapsulation in matting technology
-High specific power, low internal resistance, responsive to load
-Up to 5 times faster charge than with flooded technology
-Better cycle life than with flooded systems
-Water retention (oxygen and hydrogen combine to produce water)
-Vibration resistance due to sandwich construction
-Stands up well to cold temperature
-Less prone to sulfation if not regularly topping charged
Limitations
-Higher manufacturing cost than flooded (but cheaper than gel)
-Sensitive to overcharging (gel has tighter tolerances than AGM)
-Capacity has gradual decline (gel has a performance dome)
-Low specific energy
-Must be stored in charged condition (less critical than flooded)
-Not environmentally friendly (has less electrolyte and lead than flooded)