my usage

[Stan]

"Gegkopower"....here's what I use to power my ham shack as I'm part of our PEP (provincial emergency program) and need lots of juice for at least a week's message handling capability. (I figure I have a couple of weeks use).  Normally they are kept topped up with solar but with Penelope of course, I have unlimited charging.

These were free from our local telephone office as they have to recycle them every 10 years by law.  These batteries are conservatively rated at 20 years use if they are cared for.  The telephone company cares for them very well and so do I.  They have to be balanced to 1/100th of a volt in the battery and "equalized" at least twice per year but it's worth it.  If you want stuff like this all you have to do is find it and then ask.

If you look carefully you will see two banks of batteries (one behind the other).  I keep them separate and charged and equalized separately because they are slightly different amp/hr rated.
Stan

[peterako]

Hello i am in Greece and use a gen., inverter and battery setup plus wind generator.

I have a Lovson 6/1 running a 5KW generator. a charger inverter 8KW piek for 30min. 16KW. 24 2Volt 2000AH batterys like the one on the photo before but bigger and using round conducters inside. My wind generator is a 1000Watt type piek until now 1300W.

Whitout wind i run the house for 3 to 4 days on battery power. 

if i run my lister the inverter is changing to gen automatic and functions as UPS so a piek is still from the battery. and the charging is ballanced to keep a constand load on the generator.
On this way i am running my lister for only 8 to 10 hours full load and than the battery is full.

Greetings from Greece

[GeckoPower]

Peterako,  I plan to have a very similar set as yours. At this time I am 100% reliant on the GTC 6/1. I have two kill a watt meters hooked up to my gen set (220 volt,  one meter on each 110 volt leg measuring usage)  I bought a 3000 watt inverter, but I think I wasted my $500. My battery bank was a little small, but I didn't use it for much or very long(12v X 105 ah X 3 pcs) Longeveity of the batteries didn't seem to be much.  Monitoring each cell, adding water, equalization charge is a time consuming pain in the butt.  So I am starting to look into other options for power maybe better or different type of battery.  Any way, I thought it would be easier to figure an average usage over time than to calculate watts x estimated usage less figureing out on/ off cycles and such.  My average khw usage is .156 to .223 watts per hour.  Not sure if that is right, allow me to explain:
2.11 kwh in 13.5 hours of generator run time.  That is just one day randomly picked.  But the fact of the matter is that is expensive juice.  My fuel usage estimate is about .708 liters an hour with diesel being .789 cents liter CND  .558 cents an hour to run at a small load.  13.5 hrs x .55 = $7.42 that day to run 2.11 kwh. Cost $3.51 /kwh.  Is my math correct? I hope not!  Grid life will almost be cheaper at $25,000 to bring it to me.  I am already effiecent to the max with lighting, appliances, and electric motors.  I use propane for stove, water heater and back up house heat.  Fire wood for any temp below -10 C.  Propane bill is approx $125 / month.

Searching for solutions with all of your help,  Thanks,
Kent

[rmchambers]

Kent,
  I didn't check your math but it's been talked about here a lot that generating your own power is never going to be cheaper than buying it from the grid unless you have some sort of edge.  the edge being something like access to unlimited amounts of veggie oil or waste motor oil that you can effectively burn for free.  That doesn't take in to account what the equipment costs but for day to day running it cuts down on the purchased diesel costs.  Even if you paid the $25k to get grid power brought in you're still at their mercy, it sounds like you're living out in the woods somewhere, all it takes to put you into darkness is a decent wind and a tree.  with the setup you have you can stay warm and illuminated regardless.

Robert

[peterako]

Running your lister on pure diesel yes that is expensive. It is not difficult to find any other oil to run and most of the time it is for free.

Forget 12V batterys for any serieus work, the inner buildup is not for high current long time and freq. cycling.
For that there are expensive 2V battery systems running min. 20 Years whit only every 6 to 12 months maintenace.
 but as before there are second hand batterys on the market. this batterys are also installed in submarines, i worked on a setup using 36 year old batterys and after testing on a loadbank, having 89% of the original cap. this after 36 years 24h a day use. and as apart of the routine test deep dischrage.

As well consider to hook up the cooling water to your home heating reducing your heating bill.

greetings from greece

[GeckoPower]

Thanks for the reply guys.  Yes I am a bit out into the woods but love it.  I have heard of the monster 2v batteries but never clicked on how long they could last on a serious load factor.  One thing is that I am stubborn and persistant enough to go through and conquor this issue.  Sometimes the hurdles in life seem kinda high.

[Stan]

When I first got my 240 amp hr 2v cells, they needed equalizing.  You can "boil" them with 19 volts for up to 24 hrs according to my specs without any harm but I decided to take the gentler approach.  I hooked all of them up in series to give 12v and then connected them to a 5 amp battery charger plugged into mains.  I then measured the voltage and placed the few cells with slightly lower voltage together in the string.  Remember they want to be equalized to 1/100th of a volt.  I left the battery charger on the whole string and connected a low (75 watt) solar panel up to only the cells that were showing slightly low voltage.  You cant just simply use another battery charger, it will synchronize with the other one.  Anyway, I was able to get all my cells equalized using this method and I now only "boil" them for a few hours every 6 months (on a really sunny day) to knock off any residue and let it sink to the bottom of the cell.  I must say after 2 years of use by myself, and 10 years by my phone company there is very little sludge built up on the bottom of the cells.
Stan