Five years ago (2014) I built a 1 kilowatt solar power generator in our house. At that time, building a solar power was more expensive compare today. I have purchased four 200 watts solar panels that cost 15,000 pesos each, a 2 kilowatt 12 volt dc to 220 volt ac off-grid power inverter which costs 16,000, a 12/24 volt MPPT charge controller which costs 1,900 pesos, MC4 cables and connectors, battery cables and the batteries. It was really difficult for me to build a power bank that stores at least 500 AH of energy. Not because that I do not know how to build a power bank but the costing that gives me headache. At that time, genuine deep cycle batteries are already expensive. A 150AH battery costs 13,000 pesos and I need three to four of it to create a bank which will cost me 52,000 thousand excluding battery cables and terminal lugs. Luckily I found a store that sells solar items and batteries. It was CD-R King. I found 200AH deep cycle batteries that cost 4,900 pesos each, way cheaper compare to the genuine ones. So I will only need three of it and will only cost me below 15,000 pesos. It was a risky choice because I am aware that CD-R King sells cheap and low end products that have low durability. Since I do not have enough money and I was very excited, I purchased the CD-R King batteries.
I have completed my solar power generator and it was able to power most of our home appliances, electronic devices, lighting and lately our CCTVs. Only the air conditioning, refrigeration, and microwave oven were not included in the solar power circuitry. I also connected a manual transfer switch between outputs of solar generator and a breaker from mains power supply, so that if charging is low and batteries are less charged, we can easily switch to mains power supply. The generator worked fine for 2 months until it showed problems. The power bank gets easily fully charge for just 1 to 2 hours and drains in 1 hour or less. At first I tried to swap a newly purchased charge controller to the charge controller installed in the circuit. Same problem occurred. I was already suspecting on the batteries but still I made another way of troubleshooting by temporarily replacing the inverter with the inverter I borrowed from my friend and the problem still occurred. So finally I began to check the batteries. I managed to open the plastic sealing on top of each batteries. There were holes sealed with rubbers and I also unsealed them. What I found inside where layers of cottons which were already dried up and only the bottoms are wet. I did research online about deep cycle batteries, how they made of, types, etc. I have learned that adding distilled water to a dried up battery will restore its capability of storing energy. Of course this will only apply to batteries with plates that are still in good shape. I was not really sure if the batteries where experiencing leakage where the water evaporated and escaped out from the holes or the manufacturer purposely fill the batteries with low amount of water and acid mixture so that the product wont last long. I purchased liters of battery water sold by a gasoline station "Shell" near in our house.
I used a plastic funnel with empty ball pen casing as nozzle to fill up the batteries. (Caution: Battery solution is toxic for your brain cells. Do the refilling in a well-ventilated area and wear a safety mask.) It costed me 7 liters of battery water to 3 deep cycle batteries as shown in the above actual picture. I resealed the batteries with the rubber caps. I added epoxy adhesive to ensure air tightness.
The result was unbelievable. The bank has restored its energy storage capacity. The normal solar power charging and usage has restored. Believe it or not, the batteries are still working fine up to these days. Last year, I unsealed back again the batteries. Surprisingly, the liquid levels remain almost untouched. I filled again the batteries with the same battery water I used before. The bank did not even emptied a 1 liter bottle of battery water.
This method might work to other brands of deep cycle batteries that are used not more than two years. This might not work on gel-type batteries. The batteries I am talking here are all lead - acid batteries.
No comments:
Post a Comment