connecting batteries in parallel or series, myth and theory

Yes. There is also an alt.engineering.explosives. This thread has gone to the electrical engineering group forever it seems. I am not a usenet newby, I always read the crossposting list. The poster Me, and the Bruce I am refering to, are retired powdermen as well as other engineering accomplishments. I don't see anything unusual in engineers having multiple talents. Every Engineer I know is an engineer first with some specialty field of interest second. We all took the same basic Engineering courses in whatever schools we went to. How 'bout you? Did you take all the required basic courses before you broke out in your junior or senior year into the Electrical specialty? Did your school have an "EPICS" sequence? "Engineering Practices Introductory Course Sequence" consisting of multiple seminar and public as well as recorded speaking on your research projects as well as other "confidence building" and practical subjects such as FORTRAN for Engineers etc? But then maybe I am insane and don't realize it. Maybe I dreamed all this and have been deluding myself for the past 40 years.

Yeah, but I'm still right.

No one said you were a newbie, but it seems like 90% are these days, and they don't even know what a header is. :(

Actually, no. I backed into engineering by refusing to drive a truck, or be a cook in the US Army. I started working in a TV shop at 13, and took both years of electronics at my high school. two years later I was drafted, and tested out of a three year EE course at ft. Monmoth to be awarded Broadcast Engineer as my primary MOS, and have worked in electronics, until I was declared 100% disabled a few years ago. My last job was in engineering of DSP based Telemetry equipment. They had the basics designed, but it was the most complex product the company had ever designed, and I had the fun of taking hand built prototypes stage, to the production floor. Test fixtures, test procedures, production programming, and making changes to be able to build it on time, and on budget. I had to piss off a lot of people, but when all was said & done, it was a fairly smooth transistion. Manufacturing processes had to be modified, like our reflow processes. We had to buy a newer (Heller) oven, and went through five paste solder vendors to get the result we needed.

As far as powder, I played whith that as a teenager. We used to make 20 pounds of black powder, then make our own fire crackers, but it got boring pretty fast.

I prefered to look at what parts were on hand and design something around it. My biggest project was a commercial TV station, build from the remains of anotherstation that had retired the equipment. Most spare parts were long out of production, so you had to be creative, yet satisfy the FCC.

I programmed in several languages, and in some cases, wrote in machine cose to a floppy, using a sector editor. I also wrote and maintained test software for auutomated test fixtures. Several of the other engineers couldn't understamd why I didn't have a degree, but generally liked my ideas.

Did you ever get to work in the High Power HF transmitter tubes while you were in the Army? I toured one such station on the P.I., it seems like a century ago but was in 1969, while "resting" from a jungle survival course. I "retired" last ( 2007 ) spring after a VA surgery to my cervical spine made it necessary to do so. I am so bored sitting on my keester that I'm trying to learn things I seemed too busy to learn over the last 40 years.

My

The powder I'm talking about is seldom black. Used to break big rocks into small rocks and these days often comes packaged looking a lot like a string of Salami's.

The best Engineers are born that way. G-d protect us all from clerks educated as Engineers.

Certainly all engineering colleges are not the same. We didn't have any required inter-diciplinary courses. Only the math, physics, and chemistry was common to all engineers. That changed from a heavy cross-pollination a few years earlier, mainly to reduce the graduation from five years (fewer then 10% made it through in four years) to four (normal 120 semester hours). They couldn't eliminate the social science or humanities requirements and it didn't make sense to offer an EE degree with no EE courses, so the only thing left was TAM, statics/dynamics, etc.

The only high power transmitters I saw while in the service were the

2 MW Westinghouse RADAR units at Cairn Airfield. They were across the hall from my shop.

If you want to see a BIG transmitter, take a look at the 500 KW AM

700 kHz AM WLW experimented with:

The site has a lot of pictures of different US radio stations, as well.

I got to see and touch that WLW transmitter while still in high school, as well as the new National Radio transmitters being installed at the old Bethany VOA facility. Ten identical autotune 50 KW transmitters that could hit any frequency from the BCB to 30 MHz. They could be run as master/slave, to parallel the output. I joked with the engineer giving our radio club the tour: "Have you ever felt the urge to put a spare transmitter on CB Ch. 19 and yell, Watch out, 18 wheeler, you've got a smokey on your tail!" I thought he was going to have a heart attack. :)

I also saw the original Crosley transmitters they were replacing. they were designed and built before television, and they constantly fought with TVI in the Mason Ohio area. Finally, they were replaced by the Nationals. The Crosleys had a green metal flake paint that didn't have a scratch, and looked brand new after decades of daily service.

The last TV station I worked at had a Comark (now 'Thales') transmitter with three 65 kW Klystrons on Ch. 55. Our tower was 1749 feet above average terrain, and had a 5 MW EIRP signal that covers a large part of Florida.

As for your studies, I hope you enjoy them as much as I did when I was a kid who had to salvage parts from junk radios and televisions to do my projects. I mowed lawns to buy tools and books to teach myself the basics.

If you need help with electronics there are several in the sci.electronics.* groups. Start with news:sci.electronics.basics where people are generally more tolerant that the design newsgroup. There are a handful of trolls on all of the sci.electronics.* groups but if you kill file them, it's pretty tame. sci.electronics.repair isn't part of that group, and has a lot of idiots who are only there to disrupt threads and post nonsense.

One of my uncles owned Acme crushed Rock & Stone in Western Kentucky. I was told they supplied most of the crushed stone used in building all the interstate highways in Kentucky. They had a couple explosive experts in their quarry.

Yes, MBAs design with a calculator and dart board. I developed a reputation at my last job. When something needed attention, I would gather up my notes and limp into the engineering office for results. One day I must have had a rather nasty look on my face, because they saw me with a piece of paper and all 30+ people ran out the other end of the department. At that time I was working as a production test tech, and on a mission to eliminate the quirks and select in test problems. When i got back to the production floor my boss stopped me and said, Engineering just called, and you are banned for life. I laughed and said, That won't last. Two days later they wanted my help on an older product. I laughed and said, "I'm banned for life", and I hung up.

After another incident my boss shook his head and said "You just won't take no for an answer will you?" I laughed and said, "I won't take 'YES' when I don't believe them.

Looks to "Me" that it is the same guy. We have chat'ed, in the past, about energetics and Remote Living.

Me

I have ALWAYS said that one should be required to work as a Service Tech, in the field for a couple of years, BEFORE ever being part of a Design Team in that field. First, it keeps the Rif Raf out of the design process, and Second, you don't get designs, where you have to "Remove the engine to change the Spark Plugs, or Lube Oil".

Me

In alt.energy.homepower snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote: | On Aug 23, 7:31 am, Me wrote: |> In article , |> "Don T" wrote: |>

|> > So. What kind of capillary action exists in a VRLA? HeH. |>

|> > BTW, I am seing in literature the term Gell Cell and AGM being used |> > interchangeably. I will grant that the specific technology is quite |> > different, but ----. |>

|> > - |>

|> Don, your conversing with real Lame'rs here, on this subject. |> Not professionals by any stretch of the imagination, and |> snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com is the worst of them all. |>

|> Me | | Yeah, but I'm still right.

Heads or tails? You can be right half the time. Means nothing about an ability to know the future.

You might be right that the best installation of batteries will not have any batteries in parallel. But you really only know that by chance. You don't know any of the science behind why (you only know reasons).

This "best" is only in terms of the ultimate technical installation in the ideal circumstance (such as no limit on space or finances). You do not have the knowledge to select a "best fit" system in circumstances that would dictate something different.

You have stated more than once you believe I have asked about this in search of someone to justify a desire you _think_ I have to wire up batteries in parallel. The truth is I was looking for technical/scientific documentation to justify _any_ way to wire up batteries. What I found is that there is no one simple answer.

All that you have posted basically summarizes into one simple point: You vote for avoiding parallel batteries. There's no other useful information in your posts. A count of how many people would avoid parallel batteries is above 1 (so you are not the only one). But that is not scientific info. It serves nothing more than to be a suggestion to consider some other scheme besides parallel. But that was the point of why I asked about this in the first place (e.g. the count was already above 1 before I ever heard of you).

God, you're funny. The only reason you asked is in the hope that someone will hold your hand and tell you it's ok to use parallel batteries so you can feel good about making a choice that is stupid.

Remember this:

"This is not a problem for occasional discharges, or for more frequent discharges that are taken to completion. It can become an issue, however for a system that is designed for long discharges, but is subjected to frequent shallow discharges. In this case, the high rate battery will receive the brunt of the cycling duty, and may age prematurely as a result."

This is the kind of system used in home power situations.

Have fun

For some reason, this reminds me of the style of Obama as well. He "speaks" "really well". That, to me, is the last person we would want in office.

I cannot believe that there are people in this country that believe that idiot can "make change" for us.

Does he think "we'll just invent something" to "fix" the energy crisis?

This is Usenet, not email. idiot. Don't be a top posting Usenet retard.

Goddamned googletards!

| God, you're funny. The only reason you asked is in the hope that | someone will hold your hand and tell you it's ok to use parallel | batteries so you can feel good about making a choice that is stupid.

People might believe you if you were in a position to know. You aren't. So they know you just make stuff up.

| Remember this: | | "This is not a problem for occasional discharges, or for more frequent | discharges that are taken to completion. It can become an issue, | however for a system that is designed for long discharges, but is | subjected to frequent shallow discharges. In this case, the high rate | battery will receive the brunt of the cycling duty, and may age | prematurely as a result." | | This is the kind of system used in home power situations.

But you still fail to describe the science behind this. Of course, I'm not in a real position to know if you understand the science or not. If you do, then you must have some reason for not saying it.

I most certainly did not make up

This paper makes it quite clear that parallel batteries for a home power system is not suitable.

So unless you intend to run a float system for home power (the gods know you sound stupid enough to try) the paragraph below describes what you will be building.

The reason for not saying it is that you will call me a liar and deny that the reasons are valid.

The article at

says it all.

If you don't like the paper or its conclusions about parallel batteries in a system that is designed for long discharges, but is subjected to frequent shallow discharges, I suggest that you take it up with the author, Jim McDowall, and tell him he as a fool.

I did not write the paper. But I did tell you the same thing.

Now, off you go and buy as many T105s as you can get you grubby little hands on and string them up in parallel to your hearts content.

In alt.engineering.electrical snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote: | On Aug 25, 4:22 pm, snipped-for-privacy@ipal.net wrote: |> In alt.energy.homepower snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote: |>

|> | God, you're funny. The only reason you asked is in the hope that |> | someone will hold your hand and tell you it's ok to use parallel |> | batteries so you can feel good about making a choice that is stupid. |>

|> People might believe you if you were in a position to know. You aren't. |> So they know you just make stuff up. | | I most certainly did not make up | |

No, but you do not grok the science behind it. You, instead, look for the conclusions and then assume it applies to every case.

| This paper makes it quite clear that parallel batteries for a home | power system is not suitable.

Only for home systems where the paralleling is done the way they described.

| So unless you intend to run a float system for home power (the gods | know you sound stupid enough to try) the paragraph below describes | what you will be building.

Since you don't grok the science, you wouldn't grok the alternatives. You'll have to wait for the PDF paper to come out.

|> | Remember this: |> | |> | "This is not a problem for occasional discharges, or for more frequent |> | discharges that are taken to completion. It can become an issue, |> | however for a system that is designed for long discharges, but is |> | subjected to frequent shallow discharges. In this case, the high rate |> | battery will receive the brunt of the cycling duty, and may age |> | prematurely as a result." |> | |> | This is the kind of system used in home power situations. |>

|> But you still fail to describe the science behind this. Of course, I'm not |> in a real position to know if you understand the science or not. If you do, |> then you must have some reason for not saying it. | | The reason for not saying it is that you will call me a liar and deny | that the reasons are valid.

You are a liar and your reasons are not valid!

There. Over and done with. So there's nothing new to fear. Now go ahead and post the science you think you know.

| The article at | |

| | says it all.

It might be all there is in your small world.

And, BTW, where in the paper does the author mention home power systems? Search for "home".

| If you don't like the paper or its conclusions about parallel | batteries in a system that is designed for long discharges, but is | subjected to frequent shallow discharges, I suggest that you take it | up with the author, Jim McDowall, and tell him he as a fool.

The fool is the one who misapplies what this paper says. For example, it discusses the discharge of one string into another. But this is clearly a case of the strings simply being hot wired to each other as the means to parallel them. He didn't cover the case of strings wires in parallel with isolation rectifiers.

| I did not write the paper. But I did tell you the same thing.

No, you only told me what the paper concluded, while thinking it applied to all of the designs I'm considering (it only applies to _some_ of them).

As you wish.

Lets see you build a usable power supply form constant current diodes, low voltage Zeners, or the WW-II vintage microwave mixer diode like the 1N21.

Only in your drug induuced dreams, Floyd.

That's what a lot of people do when the get a stupid answer like that from a moron.