Comments

Iron Edison Batteries Joins the MSB — 8 Comments

  1. I would be over 10,000 USD to replace my Six Surette S530’s. They are rated 530ah at the 20hr rate and 400 at the 100 hr rate (more realistic). If I were twenty years younger I would consider these but for the cost, it is a no show. I can order five set’s of Surrettes for the cost of these for replacement. What would be the compelling reason for going with these vs traditional flooded lead acid I wonder? I can get mine replaced now for $2000 if I had to. Mine are guaranteed 10 years, and I’m into year eight. The S.G of mine recently tested 1.26, so almost as good as new. I think I can get fifteen to twenty years out of mine.

    • show 1435 Steven Harris weighs in on these batteries and why you may want them in some cases (and they are pretty specific). He also goes into great detail of why you would not want these batteries in some situations (price being just one of them).

    • The advantage is that you can run NiFe batteries much harder, down to nearly completely discharged, without damaging them, for decades. So instead of using the top 20% of lead-acid batteries to get long life, you can use nearly the entire capacity of the NiFe batteries, and thus you need only a quarter of the amp-hours of storage for the same usefulness.

      The disadvantages are that the batteries still cost more per useful amp-hour, they are heavier, and they self-discharge about 20 to 30% per month. Other than the initial up front cost, they’re a great fit for stationary installations where a top up charge occurs on a weekly or better basis.

  2. I haven’t caught the episode yet so this question may have been answered, but can the NiFe batteries be phased in over time?

    I know that with typical lead acid batteries you need to buy them as a set so that you have a better chance of getting full value from them as they age. With the info on this page about NiFe, this might not be the case.

  3. nah.. you buy the NiFe batteries all at the same time. You want to buy the cell size that you need, not 100 ah, then another 100ah, then another 100ah. You just get a 300ah to start with with 300ah cells.

    Steve