Ryobi 480e upgraded from 75 ah to 100 ah battery pack.

[Fourdoor]

Wow, the new 100 ah cells are monsters compared to the little baby 75 ah cells! Using my bathroom scale the old 75 ah cells are 50 lbs. each, so 200 lbs for the whole pack... the new 100 ah cells had a shipping weight of 76 lbs, call it 75 lbs without the packing material and you get 300 lbs. for the whole pack.

My mower was suffering from pathetic run time, no longer able to do my whole lawn without having to stop and recharge... since charging is so slow that made mowing the lawn go from an hour or so to taking all afternoon. When I first got the mower I was able to mow the whole lawn and have just a bit of battery power left (I mulch with a fairly short cut). Now with the new pack installed (pain in the butt re-doing battery tray) I can mow the whole lawn and still have 75% remaining!

I didn't discover the idea of desulfating a battery until after I purchased the new 100 ah cells, or I would have tried restoring the old battery pack instead of spending the $$$ to purchase a new one. Using a good battery tester I got 297 CCA on cell one, 275 CCA on cell two, 240 CCA on cell three, and 237 CCA on cell four. Anyone know what the CCA rating of the 75 ah cells are when new?

With the 75 ah battery installed the battery tray has spacers at the front and back, along with spacers between the cells (down the middle of the pack). With the 100 ah battery I had to remove the center line spacers that go between cells completely, and I removed the front and rear spacers as well... but that left a bit of a gap front to back, so I cut down one of the spacers and installed it on the back of the pack. Does a "factory" 100 ah pack have any spacers between the cells on the mid line? I could maybe fit some cardboard between them but I don't know if there is any point to doing so.

Since I have 104 run hours on my mower, while I had the battery pack out I changed the rear differential gear oil. Look at the difference between what I drained out and some fresh gear oil!




Since I have found out about desulferization I installed a 48V desulferator on the new pack, and I am using a dsulferator/charger to try and restore the 75 ah cells. If I am successful I can use them as a battery backup for my fridge and freezer in case of power outage, or sell them on e-bay... if they don't recover I will sell them as scrap.

Later,

Keith

 

[Fourdoor]

Hey guys,

Just an update on the "use the old cells as a backup supply" idea. Due to Hurricane season we had a 24 hour power outage at my new home, and I used my Bolt EV as a power source for the essential loads in my house (side by side Fridge / Freezer, modem, router, fan, laptops and cell phones). Using the car as a power source I could power my essential loads for over a week. I figured if power was out longer I could charge the car at work (work has backup Diesel generator). I was planning to use my old Ryobi cells to power the bare essentials (Fridge / Freezer unit) while I was re-charging the car, but it never got to that point. I decided to do a test run using the 2 near perfect cells and the marginal cell as a pack wired in parallel. I figured it would work for a few hours... in reality it lasted 17 hours and 30 min! If I ever actually need to use this in an emergency situation I will go ahead and power up the modem, router, fan etc.

Later,

Keith

 

[Fourdoor]

For those more technically minded here is the test procedure and resulting discharge profile over the 17.5 hours:

At the start of my test I plugged in the fridge to the wall to cool it down, and froze 16 half liter bottles of water and put them in the fridge section… this is the same thing I would do in preparation for an expected power outage. I then started the test by hooking the fridge up to my battery pack via the 1000 watt full sign wave 12 VDC to 120 VAC inverter.

I expected my test to run for only a few hours, so I chose to take data every 15 min getting a DC Voltage, AC voltage, and DC amps reading each time. After 6 hours of running I had to pause the test because we had errands to run, so I shut off the inverter and plugged the fridge into the wall. I resumed the test, the next day expecting it to end at any moment, and ran for another 3 hours before pausing to do some shopping. Resumed that evening for another 3 hours and paused for the night. At this point I have been running the test for 12 hours, way longer than I expected it to run.

The next morning, being sick to death of taking readings every 15 min for the first 12 hours of the test I decided to just take a reading each hour, and resumed my test. Five and a half hours later the alarm sounded on the inverter because it was no longer able to maintain 120 volts on the AC output, and I concluded the test. This was a mind boggling 17 and a half hours after starting the test run.

Pack voltage with no load at the start of the test was at 12.9 Volts

At the 1 hour point 12.6 VDC, 120 VAC, Average for the hour 140 Watts.

At the 2 hour point 12.6 VDC, 120 VAC, Average for the hour 160 Watts.

At the 3 hour point 12.6 VDC, 120 VAC, Average for the hour 101 Watts.

At the 4 hour point 12.5 VDC, 120 VAC, Average for the hour 101 Watts.

At the 5 hour point 12.5 VDC, 120 VAC, Average for the hour 132 Watts.

At the 6 hour point 12.5 VDC, 120 VAC, Average for the hour 132 Watts.

PAUSE for errands.

At the 7 hour point 12.4 VDC, 120 VAC, Average for the hour 215 Watts.

At the 8 hour point 12.3 VDC, 120 VAC, Average for the hour 216 Watts.

At the 9 hour point 12.3 VDC, 120 VAC, Average for the hour 117 Watts.

Second Pause.

At the 10 hour point 12.3 VDC, 120 VAC, Average for the hour 96 Watts.

At the 11 hour point 12.2 VDC, 120 VAC, Average for the hour 128 Watts.

At the 12 hour point 12.0 VDC, 120 VAC, Average for the hour 162 Watts.

Third Pause for over night.

AVERAGE WATTS OVER FIRST 12 HOURS = 142 WATTS

At the 13 hour point 12.0 VDC, 120 VAC.

At the 14 hour point 11.8 VDC, 114 VAC.

At the 15 hour point 11.5 VDC, 111 VAC.

At the 16 hour point 11.5 VDC, 110 VAC.

At the 17 hour point 11.2 VDC, 110 VAC.

Thirty min after this reading an alarm started sounding on the inverter, when I checked the readings they were 10.3 VDC, 101 VAC. At this point I concluded my test.

Later,

Keith

 

[bertsmobile1]

The trick to running off batteries is not to use anything with a resistance element in it like a heater or toaster or hot water ( unless it is a heat pump type ) .
If we are to shift to 100% renewables then this has to happen
That means just about every household will need to change all of their appliances ( fridges & freezers have internal heaters to prevent moisture condensation ) .
The massive amount of new appliances needed to be made will generate an equally massive amount of pollution . This includes the CO2 that the conversion was aimed at reducing so we will actually make things drastically worse by trying to make things better .
While the Green Gallouts point to the 3 totally solar cities to tell us it can be done they omitt the fact that they are all in controlled economies so every one has the same battery friendly appliances .
Try telling an American ( or an Australian for that matter ) that we all have to use the same fridge / freezers / micorwayes / vacuums / toasters etc an see how far you get .

 

[sgkent]

having been thru maybe 12 hurricanes in my life, it is common to not even be able to get home for 17 hours. More like 48 to 72. Also, Ask This Old House had a discussion on installing car chargers last week. A level one charger, 120V, charges at about 2 - 3 miles distance per hour. A level two charger uses a 50 amp 240V circuit and chargers about 25 miles distance per hour. If someone has a 200 amp service they will be able to run it and the water heater, or dryer at the same time. Otherwise caution is needed. A level 3 commercial charger uses 3-phase industrial voltage of 400 to 900 volts so they won't be in someone's home. I certainly hope that everyone fleeing a hurricane has full batteries in their EV cars and can live in stop and go 90F 95% humidity weather in the sun and clouds without the AC running in their EV cars. I also hope that when they get to where ever they flee to, there are enough chargers so they don't have to wait days to charge to get back home. Using a diesel generator to charge EV, what a novel idea. Glad it worked out for you Ok.

 

[bertsmobile1]

We have installed over 100 drop in diesel powered EV chargers because once you get past the city limits the grid can not supply the power required and idiot tourists are paying a premium to do "Green Coach Tours" in E-Coaches
Th story we were given is once they work out where the E-V chargers are needed then they will look at spending hundreds of millions to get the grid to them.
However what will happen is the same as what happened to truck refueling sites, the range of the batteries will increase so the idiot drivers will see the "last Charging Station for X miles" sign ignore it, run out of power then have to wait for the diesel tow truck to come and tow them back for a recharge .
E-cars make sense if they are more convienant for the owner but they will do diddly squat to reduce the overall pollution,
And because the atmosphere encircles the entire planet, shifting the pollution some where else will have not net effect on your life .

 

[Fourdoor]

I use EV's because they cost me about 1.5 cents per mile to drive at my current (pun intended) electric rates vs 15 cents a mile for a fuel efficient gas car right now (10 cents a mile for gas one presidential term ago), and for the high performance. My "slow" EV does zero to 60 in 6 seconds, and the fast one in 3.5 seconds. Lecture me all you like about the evils of electric and how I am not helping the environment... I have worked in fossil fuel powered electric generation for a decade and a half... you aren't going to hurt my feelings. The main advantage of the electric lawn equipment is convenience, (no oil changes, no gas cans etc), and the thing is quiet AF compared to a gas burning lawn mower. The horror stories about charging EV's are just that, horror stories. I have criss crossed this country in EV's since 2018 and I haven't been stranded once. Yes, you actually need to plan ahead if you are not in a Tesla, and anyone looking for road signs to direct them to EV charging is a newbie, anyone who passes a "last charging for xxx miles" sign (I haven't seen ANY EV charging signs on the road, let alone a "last charging for xxx miles sign) is a foolish newbie. What country are all of these Diesel powered charging stations in? I don't see any in the Walmart Parking lots where I charge my Bolt EV or at the Superchargers where the Tesla gets filled up on road trips... believe what you like about EV efficiency, I am not a school teacher so it isn't my job to cure ignorance.

Anyone who thinks you need to switch out all of your appliances to government mandated ones to ride off into some glorious government mandated electric utopia is listening to propaganda. Weather you are all in on conservation, or don't give a flip it makes sense to get a more energy efficient model of your appliances WHEN THEY WEAR OUT... not just out of the blue for no reason. This is like the anti-recycling song and dance. Is much of recycling bull crap? Yup. Am I going to send good scrap metal to a landfill because much of recycling is bull crap? Nope. Pick and chose what you think makes sense. Don't fall for anyone's propaganda without thought on either side of any issue.

Anyway, thought people would be interested in my re-purposing of the old batteries... guess I was wrong. Last thread I mentioned this subject in I was told how it would never work and I should just recycle the old batteries by people thinking they are car batteries no mater how much you explain that they are low amp deep cycle lead acid batteries, not high amp low endurance car batteries. This forum seems to be populated with fossils that are hell bent on riding their Kubota Diesel and John Deer gasoline powered equipment into the Electric lawn mower section to lecture us about how we are ruining the planet and wasting our time and money. Worst advice in the electric equipment section comes from the "old hand" that knows everything... and proceeds to display his ignorance with every word of advice. Probably a great asset in the internal combustion powered equipment areas, but laughable in here.

Don't worry, I am not leaving the forum out of anger / sadness. Next time I have a question I will ask, and I will as usual ignore most of the advice from the "old hand" members and get some good troubleshooting advice from people who actually own the same equipment I am talking about.

Keith

 

[bertsmobile1]

FWIW Keith I am in Australia where 95% of the population live within 40 miles of the coast
The generator chargers were originally ordered by the South Australian government and NSW has ordered a few for popular tourist destinations that are not on the direct route between capital cities via the coast because there is next to no inland grid and we have the biggest single power grid on the planet
Also FWIW I was originally a foundry metallurgist so pollution fact & fiction is right up my alley
And I did 5 years for the worlds largest metal recycler Sims Metal so like you I know the truth about most mass recycling schemes
On top of that Sims were Australias 2nd largest maker of lead acid batteries at that time BTW lead acid batteries are one of 2 only parts of a car that is economic to recycle and is in fact nearly 100% recycled ,the other being cast alloy wheels .
And yes your story was of interest but not something new to me
There is not as much difference between deep cycle and starting batteries apart from the thickness of the paste layer and the size of the actual grains in the paste
Deep cycle batteries have a thicker paste made from coarser grains so you can blast off the old sulphated surface and still be left with better than 95% paste thickness where as doing that with a starting battery you actually blow holes in the paste cover .
Most auto batteries fail due to plates warping , plates breaking off the busbars or paste dropping off the plates and shorting out the battery at the bottom and this is because car makers have forced battery makers to produce lighter & lighter batteries .

As for E-V's or E-anything , coming from an engineering background I hate to see resources being wasted and running anything bigger than a scooter on Lithium batteries is not a good idea from a resource allocation and less good from an environmental basis .
No arguement about them being convienant , particularly occasional use things like chainsaws , and if batteries are guaranteed to be availible for 20 years they are environmentally sound , but the reality of it is most seem to become redundent after 5 to 10 years thus adding substantially to the pollution load on the planet .
Lithium is near a perfect power source for small things like calculators, watches , hearing aids, pacemakers chain saws, line trimmers, blowers and even e-bikes .
It is a disaster for large things like cars & trucks and plain stupid for back up power for grids and houses .
But Musk has bewitched the entire planet so every one has a bad does of lithium fever which in the long run will lead to disaster .
As for coal, it should never have been burned directly in power stations from day one as it is so energy dense it is near impossible to get good energy recovery
The only sound plan for transision to renewables was to gassiffy the coal , convert the power stations to gas firing then when large scale solar becomes availible use that to dissociate water then convert the furnaces to burn the captured Hydrogen . So much easier , cheaper , safer & more efficient than converting the national grid to a myriad of micro grids each with their own back up battery
But I am sure you already know this .

Nothing against your choice for using an E-V done on the grounds of cost or convienance because there can be no arguement about either of them
I do have a problem with E-V users who do it for virtue signalling pretending to be holier than thou .
The real problem is not what we drive but how quickly we replace what we drive consigning a massive amount of pollution generation to the scrap yard to create even more pollution way before the embedded pollution has been amortised .
Cars used to last 20 to 30 years no problems but now days you can not get parts for them after 5 years and mowers are not all that much different regardless of their power source .

I wish you well in your retirement and hope the planet is around for long enough for you to enjoy it .