>Any opinions on the new Odyssey dry cell battery Van's is now carrying?
>
>Claimed advantages:
>7 lbs. lighter than comparable RG25
>8 year design life, 3-8 year service life (2 year factory replacement
>warranty)
>Long storage life, maintains 50% charge after two years
>100% deep cycle capacity
>
>Also wondering how it fits into Bob N./Aeroelectric design philosophy
>(which I intend to base the majority of my electrical system on).
Found this battery on the web. I'll invite you all to check out
<http://www.hepi.com/home.htm> which is the Hawker Energy
Products home page. These are the folk that took over the
Gates Energy Products line of RG batteries dating back over
20 years. If anyone should have a leg up on this market's
leading edge in technology, it should be Hawker.
The spec sheets for the Odyssey line are downloadable from
<http://www.hepi.com/products/sli/odyspecs.htm>. The most noteworthy
improvements are deep cycle life of 400-500 cycles.
Their earlier Genesis batteries (as are other manufacturers)
are rated at 80-100 cycles.
Charging recommendations are found at:
<http://www.hepi.com/products/sli/odycharg.htm> and I note they
are unchanged from the Genesis recommendations of
14.4 - 14.7 volts for "cyclic" or "fast charge" service
and 13.6 - 13.8 volts for "floating" or "standby"
service.
I'm a little unhappy to see them call these "drycell" batteries,
they MUST have water in the electrolyte, but like all other
RG batteries, it's contained in 80-90% saturated glass mats
which, if you open the battery up, appear to be dry.
The 7 pound weight savings noted in the orignal post is a
bit misleading . . . If you check the data sheet you'll see
that there are two batteries in the 13-14 pound range that
will deliver a "reserve capacity" of 27-28 minutes. The
notes for the data sheet say this is to support a 25A load
down to 10.5 volts. Extrapolating this out: 25 x 28 is
700 ampere-minutes divided by 60 yields 11.6 ampere-hours
at the 25 amp rate (impressive by the way). The next battery
size up is rated at 24 pounds to deliver 22 A.H. at the
25 amp rate. These weight to capacity ratios are right
in line with the rest of the industry. If Van's battery
is 7 pounds lighter, it has to be that he's offering a 12
AH battery in place of a 22 AH battey . . . a perfectly
good thing to do in light of the advanced performance of
RG over flooded technologies. B&C has offered batteries
in the 15-17 AH range at 15 pounds for several years.
The 7-milliohm internal resistance values cited for the
12 AH battery tracks along with the industry pretty well
too. I noted also that they speak of a metal jacket on
these batteries . . . I wonder if they've figured out a
way to do lined steel cases to replace the more expensive
injection molded plastic cases. I'll have to dig around
and ask about this.
All told, nothing really earth shaking here, the King
of RG Batteries is holding a lead with what appears to
be an improvement in cycle-life and chronological life.
Performance in the market place has yet to be gaged.
If you were going to bet on anyone's success, you
could do worse than backing Hawker.
Bob . . .
AeroElectric Connection
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