Soneil’s SiO2 Batteries - Somebody Has To Try Them!

Johannes Boonstra with Victron put it bluntly to one of his commenters:
 

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FWIW, I think this SiO2 battery is actually more of a gel cell than a AGM, it uses powder silica (SiO2, aka Quartz) and sulfuric acid as a gel, rather than a 'mat' of glass fiber like AGM.

Gel cells indeed are a little better at deep discharge, but can't output quite as much instant current as a AGM. You can use a AGM as a starter battery, you can not use a gel cell that way as the 100s of amps starting current would damage them.
 
John, I’ve looked at the various battery makers. Still, Trojan only wants you to go to 50% DOD, so only 130 useable ah’s.
I haven't seen that from Trojan. I realize it's a different product line from the sizes that one would likely use in an RV, Trojan's Solar AGM line shows a 1200 cycle life at discharge to 30% SoC (70% DoD), and no one would do that every time. That's better than the cycle life of Trojan's Signature line flooded deep-cycle products. The spec sheets routinely show a cycle life at 50%, but that doesn't mean that they can only be discharged to 50%.

The first of these graphs is for Trojan's Solar AGM, and the second is for their Signature flooded line:
solarcyclelife.jpg

CycleLife-RE-sign.png


Finally, PerryB67's plan mostly seems to be to run the dual 260 Ah AGMs to 30% discharge, and more in difficult situations. That should work just fine, but it seems a $450 pair of 6V AGMs should be able to do it.
I agree - discharging to 30% SoC (70% DoD) is certainly possible, and for any battery there is a trade-off between depth of discharge and cycle life. I hope that the trade-of is better for the SiO2 variant.
 
I wish Perry luck with these batteries and I appreciate him giving them a shot and providing feedback to the group. Personally though my hesitation lies in the fact that the DIY Solar Forum guys are not convinced. They seem to buy, test, abuse and discuss every possible solar system component on the planet. There isn’t much mention of these on their site besides some speculation and that concerns me.
 
The Achilles Heel of Lead Crystal

Well it appears the Achilles Heel of Lead Crystal Batteries is obvious.
According to this Tech Bulletin 2018/001, In Bulk phase proper current and charge algorithm must be used.

example: battery bank consisting of 2- 6 volt batteries @ 260 AH would require
a 0.2C @C10 (or 20% or the C10 rate)

C10 = 240 AH x .2 = 48 AMPS ! under optimal tilted conditions a 100 watt solar panel puts out about 6 amps. 48 / 6 = 8 -100 watt panels.

If your panels are flat you could see something like 4 amp out of 100 watt panels. 48 / 4 = 12- 100 watt panels.

In order to charge LC batteries per the manufacturers requirement, you need a
60 amp battery charger /solar controller / DC-DC charger that you can manually set specifically to its charging algorithm. $$$
Bottom line these batteries should never have been marketed for trailers or under hood RV IMO.


Tech Bulletin 2018/001 click link below
https://4127787.app.netsuite.com/co... not uncommon in,limited roof space for solar.



 

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