13 yr old Lead Acid battery

[Mick H]

Just connected a 13yr old lead acid battery, to our battery bank, and attached a cheap Chinese inverter. Wonder how long the battery will last ?
Only going to use the inverter for a toaster. and boiling an electric kettle. The old battery is a Enduroline 110amp, but, obviously will not have anything like that capacity, now.
It still holds 12.7 volts, after standing for a couple of weeks. Interesting experiment !

 

[Robmac]

I would think a kettle would knock the stuffing out of it pretty quickly.

What size inverter?

 

[st3v3]

3kw? 10 minutes if you're lucky.

 

[Robmac]

A 13 year old Lead Acid wouldn't fill me with confidence to be honest.

You may need a backup plan.

 

[barryd]

I hope you like cold tea and lightly done toast.

I'll be very happy to eat those words though.

 

[Fisherman]

Even a 1kw inverter could discharge an old lead battery to quickly, but unless you have a low wattage kettle and toaster you will require a 2-3kw inverter. Boiling a kettle will use 5-6amps from a battery with only 50 useable amps that’s 10% per kettle of water, the toaster will be roughly the same. So that’s 20% of your usable amps.
But doing this will probably damage the battery due to such a high discharge rate.

We have a 700w kettle running on a 1kw inverter and 2 100ah lithium batteries.

 

[Trotter]

5 year old battery
Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you etc

 

[Mick H]

I would think a kettle would knock the stuffing out of it pretty quickly.

What size inverter?

It's a 2000w - 4000w modified sine wave inverter. First test was with the toaster, and it worked fine, so far.

 

[Mick H]

A 13 year old Lead Acid wouldn't fill me with confidence to be honest.

You may need a backup plan.

Don't need a back up plan, everything else is available, in the van, as usual. It's only an experiment, 'cos it will amuse me.

 

[Robmac]

Don't need a back up plan, everything else is available, in the van, as usual. It's only an experiment, 'cos it will amuse me.

It will be interesting. I've seen in the past batteries surpassing all of the science including on my first boat in the 80's. On that I had an old car battery running a 10" 12V TV, all the lights and the Water pump and we didn't seem to be able to wear it out, obviously not through an Inverter though.

It wasn't charged from the engine either, we just had a 10W Solar Panel at the time.

 

[oppy]

Our 9 year old lead acid battery died just a week ago !! We were on our way to Musselburgh and stopped at our favourite farm shop overnight. In the morning start.....clunk, jump leads out, 10 minutes later...clunk. Connect charger to inverter, an hour later...clunk, RAC , yup, 12volts ok but only 4 amps, so what do you suggest? Ah, a new battery, ok I said, can you arrange for a supplier for us?----Well would you believe he actually had one in a drawer, wonderful we thought, ta muchly, £225 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, still it got us going.

 

[trevskoda]

If you had a switch and relay like i have you could start using the less batteries.

 

[Nabsim]

Now see I have the opposite with lead acid, killed a set of 3 new ones in less than 12 months and that was without an inverter, (well I had a little 300W inverter for Caz's MacBook).

 

[Mick H]

Update on my experiment. Yesterday I used both the toaster (900 watt), and the electric kettle (1080 watt). in quick succession. All worked fine.
Today, I tried the washing machine ( Approx 160 watt ), to make sure that it worked. Inverters sometimes don't seem to like some electric motors, but, again it worked fine, on a 15 min cycle.
Just to explain, in my original post, I stated that I had connected the 13 yr old battery, to our battery bank. This consists of 2 Bosch 90 AH batteries, charged by recently fitted solar panels. The 2 Leisure batteries are in a dedicated outside locker, so, attaching an inverter directly to them, was not a very practical proposition. That's why I decided on the experiment, because I already had the 13yr old lead acid battery. I am well aware of the downsides of connecting a battery in this way. It's still summertime, so, the solar is providing an adequate charge, but how will it be in the autumn, if the old battery survives ?
I'm not planning to use the van, until the end of the month, when we go on a European trip, but will report, occasionally, if anyone interested.

 

[Chasn]

The problem with even newer lead-acid batteries is that they come back to bite you at the most inconvenient moment. The change to lithium is a one-off expense to get a much improved electrical system. Lithium batteries installed with a good BMS are likely to outlive the vehicle. For any given usable Ah capacity a lithium battery now costs less than twice the price of lead-acid. Having to buy more than one lead-acid battery during the life of the vehicle is uneconomic and limits the versatility of the electrical system. If you use EHU much of the time then lead-acid might just be justifiable but for anyone considering wild camping lithium is now the norm. It is only a matter of time before MH's all come with a lithium battery as standard.

 

[barryd]

Update on my experiment. Yesterday I used both the toaster (900 watt), and the electric kettle (1080 watt). in quick succession. All worked fine.
Today, I tried the washing machine ( Approx 160 watt ), to make sure that it worked. Inverters sometimes don't seem to like some electric motors, but, again it worked fine, on a 15 min cycle.
Just to explain, in my original post, I stated that I had connected the 13 yr old battery, to our battery bank. This consists of 2 Bosch 90 AH batteries, charged by recently fitted solar panels. The 2 Leisure batteries are in a dedicated outside locker, so, attaching an inverter directly to them, was not a very practical proposition. That's why I decided on the experiment, because I already had the 13yr old lead acid battery. I am well aware of the downsides of connecting a battery in this way. It's still summertime, so, the solar is providing an adequate charge, but how will it be in the autumn, if the old battery survives ?
I'm not planning to use the van, until the end of the month, when we go on a European trip, but will report, occasionally, if anyone interested.

We are always interested in stuff like this so please do let us know how you get on. Glad it worked. My immediate thoughts would be to keep all the batteries the same. I'm no expert but I thought an old one of different AH could possibly bring the others down if its a bit dodgy.

 

[Robmac]

Update on my experiment. Yesterday I used both the toaster (900 watt), and the electric kettle (1080 watt). in quick succession. All worked fine.
Today, I tried the washing machine ( Approx 160 watt ), to make sure that it worked. Inverters sometimes don't seem to like some electric motors, but, again it worked fine, on a 15 min cycle.
Just to explain, in my original post, I stated that I had connected the 13 yr old battery, to our battery bank. This consists of 2 Bosch 90 AH batteries, charged by recently fitted solar panels. The 2 Leisure batteries are in a dedicated outside locker, so, attaching an inverter directly to them, was not a very practical proposition. That's why I decided on the experiment, because I already had the 13yr old lead acid battery. I am well aware of the downsides of connecting a battery in this way. It's still summertime, so, the solar is providing an adequate charge, but how will it be in the autumn, if the old battery survives ?
I'm not planning to use the van, until the end of the month, when we go on a European trip, but will report, occasionally, if anyone interested.

Just to clarify then Mick - so the Inverter is running off of the full bank ie. 290AH? And - how much Solar do you have?

The old battery will certainly be the weakest link, but whilst it still functions I will certainly be interested to hear the results, particularly how it performs as Autumn draws on.

 

[Mick H]

That's correct, 290 AH it is. I fitted a 340 watt solar system. I didn't really need to, because we've managed ok, for 45 yrs. Normally, we only stop for 2 -3 days, in one place, but we do watch a lot of tv.
The reason I fitted solar was because I removed our Oyster sat system, and there was so much roof space, that I decided why not, lets give it a go. We've not used the Oyster for over 2 yrs, relying on a Firestick via the mobile hotspot. This has mainly been ok, apart from the occasional poor signal, but, that was the same with the sat system, where trees etc, blocked the signal.

 

[caledonia]

I think you need to get out more?
Give the Scrapman your old battery and viisit a museum if you like old things.

 

[Robmac]

That's correct, 290 AH it is. I fitted a 340 watt solar system. I didn't really need to, because we've managed ok, for 45 yrs. Normally, we only stop for 2 -3 days, in one place, but we do watch a lot of tv.
The reason I fitted solar was because I removed our Oyster sat system, and there was so much roof space, that I decided why not, lets give it a go. We've not used the Oyster for over 2 yrs, relying on a Firestick via the mobile hotspot. This has mainly been ok, apart from the occasional poor signal, but, that was the same with the sat system, where trees etc, blocked the signal.

We're much the same in terms of short stopovers Mick and then you're back to full power once you've had a boost from the alternator.

I've gone for overkill now though because we've scrapped the gas system and everything is now electric apart from the heater which is Diesel. We got by for many years though without solar and were never uncomfortable in this and previous vans.