Re: [A/S] What are AGM batteries?

[schuetzen <chasm@xxxxxxxxx>]

you really need to talk to a fellow named John Nixon in Arlington TX
who is an EE and who knows batteries in and out.  He is also the
master distributor for Lifeline in Texas 
I spent about 75 min on teh phone with him while we worked out what
kind of batteries I wanted for my Sovereign.
He works with Casita building the electrics in their little trailers
but his folks had Airsteams so he knows about univolts, Linc's and
Charge Wizards and Intellipowers and T105s and Deep Cycles and AGM vs
wet cells and so forth.

I am trying to get him to join this list and answer questions like
yours although, if you were to go to the list archives, you would
likely find your answers there.

a golf battery is usually 6 volts with a lot of capacity and is a wet
cell or gel cell or a AGM.  The lifeline is a 220aH but 6V which means
you have to hook the two batteries up to equal 12 volts but that means
the capacity stays the same as one of the batteries.

Otoh, you can buy two 12 volt AGM which are 100aH and hook them up so
that you can combine the capacity to double it to 200aH but the
voltage stays at 12 volts.  one is hooked up in series, the other in
parallel.  I misremember which is which.

Golf carts usually have 4 to 6 of these batteries hooked up for 6 volt
or 12 volt and all that capacity.  they are usually wet cell.  they
are run all day until they are completely depleted then they are
charged overnight.  a wet cell usually has about 400 total recycles in
it so that means, it is usually replaced every year.  John told be
that T105s are cheap because there are two factories in the US that do
nothing but make them - about a million a year.  

otoh, the AGM equivalent which is a 4D I think it is, maybe not - can
be discharged to nothing and recharged about 1000 times.  so you get 3
yrs out of one for $190 vs one yr out of one T105 wet cell for 75$ or
less.  

any way, that is a start.  we have some real darned smart people here
on this list who can help you better than I but I do look forward to
getting John on the list to answer questions much like Charles Ledger
does on the Power Stroke list.

John makes his living running a warehouse out of Arlington (DFW area)
for the deep pockets up there and there 400,000$ Class Cs  and another
warehouse down near Kemah (NASA area) for the deep pockets down there
with their 40foot bay cruisers, etc.

more later
chas
--
Charles L Hamilton, Houston, TX  www.schuetzen.net