swapping wet cells for gel..advice needed

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Rory166
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Joined: Sat May 17, 2014 7:45 am
Location: Norwich, UK

Re: swapping wet cells for gel..advice needed

Postby Rory166 » Mon May 26, 2014 6:50 pm

Tim

I would say dont do it. The price of Lipo is coming down and they are worth many times a gel cell in terms of useful life. I fitted lipo in place of gel in my wifes disabled buggy 3 years ago. the gel cells would start to lose range and speed after 6 months. The lipos are still as good as new and they were only half the AH number of the gel cells. The reduction in weight is significant in increasing vehicle performance but the life is the real issue.

You could buy 160AH thunderskys from grumpy-b and I am sure you would be pleased that you did down the line. I am certain these would outperform the 225 AH gels and last approx 10 times as long.

The gel batteries have different charging voltage requirements to the wets. ie a gel cell on cylic use is 15v for a nominal 12v battery.

According to grumpys latest offer 15 thundersys might only cost about 1800 pounds just get the number of cells to match the charger you have, bear in mind that is the peak voltage not the average as measured on a multimeter which is relevant. If you monitor the cell voltages carefully you may get away without a bms.

Rory
Electric Seicento conversion, Leaf

Grumpy-b
Posts: 991
Joined: Sat Dec 01, 2007 12:06 pm

Re: swapping wet cells for gel..advice needed

Postby Grumpy-b » Fri May 30, 2014 12:45 pm

I have a customer who has decided to replace the full pack of thundersky 160ah in their C1 Evie. Most are working really well but a couple have failed. So they intend to hang onto the car long term and paid a really good price in the firts place from its previous owners, who had it from new.
Result is that they will have some cells to sell. You would need a 16 cell pack and I think that you could get them for around £1200 cash to the owners directly, but I would have to check with the owner as they were considering using them for solar PV storage. PM me if you are interested.
I have just modded a polaris Electric to bottom balanced lifepo4, and the delta q charger on the polaris has an algorithm in it that whilst for gel cells gives approximately the right end voltage for a 200ah set of thunderskys. The profile 73 which seems to be on a lot of the Delta q chargers has too low a finishing voltage. Ask the supplier of the vehicle what Profiles the Delta q in your vehicle has, then post the numbers on here.


Grumpy-b


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