Werker SLA batteries? (... better than PowerSonic?)

I am back to power sonic. Tried the Batteries Plus because of timing. First battery lasted less than a year before failure. They were great help etc. but the replacement battery failed again in the same timeframe. The previous battery was a Power Sonic I got with the glider. It was on the order of 7 years when it rapidly failed. One other note on Batteries Plus, the replacement battery doesnot get it's full one year warranty. The replacement battery only has a warranty of what's left of the original.

Still wondering if the charger is part of the issue, even though I was using the same charger on the old PS for several year.

Batteries Plus service and testing of the batteries was excellent. I just couldn't get them to work very long. Battery issues cause great uncertainty when flying way out from home.

Not all Batteries are the same as well as not all chargers are the same.
The chargers have different charging tables. Some of the higher end smart
chargers detect the type of battery it is and can charge appropriately but
there is not one charger that can do it all. Sorry. Your life expectancy of
a battery will go up drastically when you use a compatible charger with
your new battery. Talking to battery experts is very helpful here. A pefect
example is the pardigm shift to Litho Batteries for capacity reasons from
NiMh.
If you have an old charger, they will not charge Litho batteries well.
Dependant on the charger you can get a variable outcome. I have seen
everything from Litho batteries catching fire on an airplane to just
charging a battery to 50% capacity. If you are going to update your
batteries to the greatest capacity, spend the money and buy a compatible
charger. Regards, Doug

P.S. a Litho battery fire is extremely difficult to contain. Never leave
these batteries charging unattended. Don't believe me, goggle search it!

Just to be clear.

PowerSonic batteries are made in China, Taiwan and Viet Naam. Saying that Werker batteries are made in the same factory as PowerSonic batteries is not he same as saying that they are relabled PowerSonic batteries. It is a sub contractors industry, where corporations spec, pay for and label their production runs. I doubt that PowerSonic owns factories in China, Taiwan and Viet Naam.


On Monday, April 29, 2013 9:13:52 PM UTC-6, Darryl Ramm wrote:
On Monday, April 29, 2013 8:00:59 PM UTC-7, mike wrote:

On Monday, April 29, 2013 7:10:04 PM UTC-6, 2NO wrote:



I'm growing weary of my PowerSonic (PoS) batteries crapping out a few minutes after their 1 year warranty expries.















Are Werker batteries any better? ... or are they essentially the same?















The salesman at Batteries Plus who said they pretty much stopped selling PS because they were having quality issues ...







Batteries Plus labels Werker Batteries, and have claimed that Werker batteries are made in same factory as Power Sonic, putting them on equal footing. I doubt that there is much of a quality control problem from one brand to the other. On my third year with one Werker battery and on the second with the other. Had one with problems just after one year, but BP honored the warranty anyway. They seem ok to me.



I am pretty sure that Werker are relabeled Exide and others vendors, I'm not sure if that includes PowerSonic, it may. But they definitively relabel batteries from multiple vendors, for what that's worth, and it may not be much. If they have good warranties that's a great point to catch the unavoidable failures that every vendor will have.



My reaction however to "my brand name battery is not reliable or repeatedly dies early" should I switch to Werker, is no--the brand of the battery is probalby not the issue.



Darryl

On Tuesday, April 30, 2013 9:17:57 AM UTC-5, Doug Mueller wrote:
Not all Batteries are the same as well as not all chargers are the same.

The chargers have different charging tables. Some of the higher end smart

chargers detect the type of battery it is and can charge appropriately but

there is not one charger that can do it all. Sorry. Your life expectancy of

a battery will go up drastically when you use a compatible charger with

your new battery. Talking to battery experts is very helpful here. A pefect

example is the pardigm shift to Litho Batteries for capacity reasons from

NiMh.

If you have an old charger, they will not charge Litho batteries well.

Dependant on the charger you can get a variable outcome. I have seen

everything from Litho batteries catching fire on an airplane to just

charging a battery to 50% capacity. If you are going to update your

batteries to the greatest capacity, spend the money and buy a compatible

charger. Regards, Doug



P.S. a Litho battery fire is extremely difficult to contain. Never leave

these batteries charging unattended. Don't believe me, goggle search it!

Doug,
What in the world is a Litho battery? Do you mean LiPo? By the way, do you watch your laptop when the (LiPo) battery is on charge? We need to be careful with all the old-wifes tales that are repeated here, the devil is in the details.
Just for experimental purposes, I once put a nail through one of my 2200 AH 3p Lipos and you are right, the fire starts pretty much immediately and is next to impossible to quench. That does not mean they will burst into flames any second.

PowerSonic was a reliable battery before their manufacturing was outsourced. Now all bets are off. Is Yuasa any better?
At work we use a lot of AA and 9V alkaline batteries. The old reliable brands (ie Duracell) cannot be trusted like they used to be. Now we're switching to rechargeable Lithium packs.
I had some ancient 7A/H PowerSonics that just kept going. One had been left with a load for 11 months, which as you imagine metered zero volts. It was charged and found capable of running a modest instrument panel for three to four hours. More recently acquired PowerSonic batteries were disappointing.
The new Tenergy LiFePO4 batteries are also made in questionable places, but are - so far - working far better than any SLA I've used. Had a problem with the controller (panel power-up would trigger protection) on a 14A/H pack but the company refunded it right away. Now using three Tenergy 12V 10A/H. Primary two in parallel and a separate one.
Jim

wrote:
We need to be careful with all the old-wifes tales that are repeated here, the devil is in the details.

Quite right. But we also need to be careful with panglossian optimism.

There are many videos on youtube showing what happens when a battery is grossly mistreated.
The results are somewhat spectacular. But so what, we wouldn't fly with batteries that had
been grossly mistreated, would we?

More interestingly, a very quick search indicated[1] Dell had to recall laptop batteries
3 times in 5 years; the last involved 4,000,000 batteries. If we assume that Dell isn't
staffed by cretins, clearly there are some subtle effects that can cause significant
problems.


Just for experimental purposes, I once put a nail through one of my 2200 AH 3p Lipos and you are right, the fire starts pretty much immediately and is next to impossible to quench. That does not mean they will burst into flames any second.

Just for fun:
- an M67 grenade has a charge of 180g, which probably equates
to around 180000J of energy
- 12V battery discharged at 4A for 1hour releases 172000J of energy


[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuNSzs679Sw
bog-standard TV news report, so usual caveats apply

On Tuesday, April 30, 2013 2:23:31 PM UTC-5, Tom Gardner wrote:



Quite right. But we also need to be careful with panglossian optimism.



There are many videos on youtube showing what happens when a battery is grossly mistreated.



More interestingly, a very quick search indicated[1] Dell had to recall laptop batteries

3 times in 5 years; the last involved 4,000,000 batteries. If we assume that Dell isn't

staffed by cretins, clearly there are some subtle effects that can cause significant

problems.








Tom, I'm getting a bit tired of your tirades on not trying anything that doesn't go back to your college days and is "well proven". Your answer to all questions seems to be "it depends" and that is also an adult diaper brand here in the US. If you want to base your decisions on YouTube videos, I have news for you: many of them are staged or directed by morons. Sorry to get personal but please stop giving us your trivial opinions. Btw. you're mixing up your chemistry in your last post: Laptop batteries are Lipos, we are talking Life batteries here.

my2c, laptop batteries are generally all labeled Lithium Ion which encompasses all types of batteries with a Lithium electrolyte regardless of how the electrolyte is contained.

Doug,
What in the world is a Litho battery? Do you mean LiPo? By the way, do
you watch your laptop when the (LiPo) battery is on charge? We need to
be
careful with all the old-wifes tales that are repeated here, the devil is
in the details.
Just for experimental purposes, I once put a nail through one of my 2200
AH
3p Lipos and you are right, the fire starts pretty much immediately and
is
next to impossible to quench. That does not mean they will burst into
flames any second.

My apologies for the use of slang. Litho is a slang word for a LiPo
battery. This unfortunately is not an old wives tale as you infer. There is
truth in my comments made. No I do not watch my laptop being charged but I
do monitor charging of my larger glider batteries with a thermo sensor.
Litho batteries are sensitive to a number of conditions during the charging
cycle.
The public at large had to go through the same rechargable battery learning
curve when the Nickel Cadmium battery back in the 60's.
Common charging errors we 1. Over Charging 2. Thermal Runaway 3. Not
100% charged which caused a memory in the battery thereby reducing its
useful life.
Todays smart chargers aid in charging rechargable batteries. They protect
from Over charge states, thermal runaway, and undercharge.
The only problem is that to have a smart charger that charged all types of
rechargeables would be large and awkward to have around. Each battery has
a unique charging table. Some like high current charges in the beginning
and some like suttle ramp up profiles. This is way more info then this
thread was intended. I wanted to put out to the glider community that
charging new style batteries with old style chargers will cause you more
grief to useful life,more so then the name on the battery!

wrote:

Tom, I'm getting a bit tired of your tirades on not trying anything
that doesn't go back to your college days and is "well proven".
Your answer to all questions seems to be "it depends" and that is
also an adult diaper brand here in the US. If you want to base your
decisions on YouTube videos, I have news for you: many of them
are staged or directed by morons. Sorry to get personal but
please stop giving us your trivial opinions. Btw. you're mixing
up your chemistry in your last post: Laptop batteries are Lipos,
we are talking Life batteries here.

Wow, I'm sorry I seem to have touched a nerve.

Your posting contains:
- some ad-hominem attacks
- one informational statement
- a focus on presentation media and style, rather than
the information in the presentations
- several inaccurate and contentious statements that are
only possible because you have too heavily snipped
sections of my posting
- and a "that's the pot calling the kettle black" statement

Can I suggest that you put me in your killfile.