___Did either of you see D0li0’s response in the Yahoo forum? I sure hope something comes of this Lead Acid technology because that would make Hybrid’s that much more attractive for everyone …
___Good Luck
___Wayne R. Gerdes
___Hunt Club Farms Landscaping Ltd.
___[email:b28w91i9]Waynegerdes@earthlink.net[/email:b28w91i9]
xcel, A lot of his comments are flawed. VRLA are matenience free, they just have a blow off vaulve if the pressure gets too high (ie way overcharged). Heck Hawker, which is the battery they are using I think, says in their data sheets that their batteries can be used for hybrid vehicles, they just need to be plugged in to top them off for optimal life since hybrids tend to operate them no higher than 80%. But if the car were programmed to do an equalizing charge once in a while you could eliminate this need even.
Throw some good cooling on a pack of hawkers and they would probably perform better in the hot south than the nickel metals probably would, although they would suffer in the cold cold probably more so than nickel metals. I guess it would depend on the prive vs frequency of replacment need.
__________________
Later, Ricky
02 Red Insight - Sold
06 Silver Civic Hybrid
92 Saturn SC2 Electric, Arizona Alt fuel plate "ZEROGAS"
___Likely so … The item I see is Hawker is involved. Do you think they are seeing a possible loss of future market with Ni-MH’s, Li-Ion’s, or Zn-Air’s supplying all of the electrical needs of future Hybrid’s or even taking over in other automobiles once the expense issues are overcome?
___Good Luck
___Wayne R. Gerdes
___Hunt Club Farms Landscaping Ltd.
___[email:2fraxcan]Waynegerdes@earthlink.net[/email:2fraxcan]
Interesting. Can any of you tech-heads out there tell me what the maximum and minimum SOC of the Insight battery is? In the '03 Prius the limits are pretty tight, it's only allowed to sit from 60% to 80%, but I think someone here said it was more on the Insight.
Reason I'm asking is to compare with the lead acid.
Thanks for the link. The reason I'm thinking about this is because of the issue of cycle life and depth of discharge - ie gains in one mean losses in the other.
If the Insight battery is 144V x 6.5 Ah, that's a maximum available energy of 936 Wh. However, if the battery were allowed to drain and fill completely all the way from 0% to 100% all the time, it would die inside a year! To have this amount of energy in 30Wh/kg in lead acid would mean a battery weight (not including packaging and controls) of around 30kg, but the paper says it is 44kg in their test vehicle - so maybe they are using a narrower window of SOC than the NiMH in the Insight, and aiming for about 1.5kWh total? If they are, then that would mean a cost (of cells alone) of around $300 for the new lead acid packs at todays prices. Could turn out to be a cheaper replacement than the OEM!
If you read the PDF document, maybe you can confirm this:
They use more battery cells than needed in order to 'condition' the cells individually dynamically.
So on the fly and at any time they can condition (I suppose this rejuvinate the cell) any cell. They use a 36V pack of 19 cells. This is 38 volts so they always have one Extra cell and at any time, they use 18 of 19 cells.
The extra cell can be any at any time and they condition all of them while driving (one at a time)
This in a NiMh of our Insight could have removed the need for Recalibration. If Honda would have thought about it. They could have reconditioned any of our 144 cells if they had just put 1 more and a mechanism to use 144 of 145 at any time.They seem to use relays on top of each cell.
BTW our pack is 28.3 Kg as stated into the PDF document.
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PBA Insight
