Brent,
Please let Cliff know that R300 looks great and that we have been thinking of
building something similar for fun, but we've been tied up doing other work
with the Navy and haven't gotten around to it, but we'd love to learn more
about his sub.
That being said, we've had ups and downs with Valence batteries. The first run
had to be replaced due to manufacturing flaws, as did the second run. That's
180 batteries in all. The set we have now is the second generation of U-Charge
series and they seem to be working well. I should say that we did get good
performance out of the second run of the first-gen but they had some
capacitance issues that can be traced, possibly, to impurities in the cells
during assembly.
Anyway, we've been very happy with the batteries and would recommend them with
several caveats, those being that they are much more demanding in terms of
charging and maintenance. Of course we have 90 on board with 150kWhrs of power
and I'm assuming the R300 is only going to run 4 or so at a nominal 48VDC?
Anyway, shouldn't be a problem to charge them, but you'll need a battery CPU to
monitor them during charging and also discharge. I suppose if you were only
using 4 you could just have the computer set up when you are charging and then
just not worry about it when in operation, but then you would have no way to
know if there was a problem developing or not in terms of heat or capacitance.
That being said, it's really during charging, and not discharge (assuming you
aren't pulling a crazy load) that you ned to be very, very careful.
We are looking at using the Epoch series but the next couple of subs in
construction require greater power density than Valence can provide and we are
working with another company to make use of a liquid polymer system that is
considerably more expensive and more dangerous and something that CANNOT be!
in
t
he inhabited space.
So, if you need more information we'd be happy to tell you what we can, but
can't really comment on the use of S201 as it is primarily for research with
the Navy.
In short, I'd recommend the batteries from Valence but you need to go into it
with your eyes open and remember that in many cases you will be learning on the
job.
One more thing, cost.....I believe that for us the cost was somewhere around
$250,000 for the batteries. Again, we needed 90...no idea what 4 would costyou..
Hope this note finds you well and happily building submarines.
Brett
Quoting Brent Hartwig <brenthartwig@hotmail.com>:
>
> Dear Mr. Phaneuf
> I'm apart of a international group of people that design and/or build there
> own private, usually small submarines. http://www.psubs.org/ We are
> interesting in the Marian S201, and in particular it's Li-ion batteries. We
> have been looking at the Valence, U-Charge Li-ion batteries and soon to be
> available Epoch Li-ion large batteries from Valence as well, to increase are
> subs battery endurance. One of the most interesting subs to be recently
> completed by one of the guys in are group is the R300. The designer and
> builder is Cliff Redus, and he is one of the guys that would like to change
> out his lead acid batteries for large Li-ion batteries.
> http://www.psubs.org/projects/redus/If it's not a big trade secret, we would
> like to know what brand and model of batteries you used in the Marian S201.
> Also if possible knowing the price of the batteries and supplier would be
> very helpful in deciding if they are a financial option for certain projects.
> Regards,
> Brent Hartwig 'Amateurs built the Ark, Professionals built the
> Titanic.' ~Unknown
&g!
t;
&g
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