Mike Philips wrote:What’s the safest, greenest, rechargeable battery? Maybe a rechargeable zinc-air battery?
For years now, I've been so curious about nickel iron batteries for home use. They are very heavy, but almost impossible to destroy by abuse. The like to be used heavily, and they need no fancy charging circuitry. You can recharge them fast at a higher voltage with no damage, too. They used to be used in electric forklifts, sometimes electric trains, too, I think, maybe for bursts of power. Full discharge with zero damage. (Lots about them online, going back to their inventor, Thomas Edison.)
They have a definite tendency to self discharge faster than other batteries, and the initial cost is much higher than the other alternatives. But it has always seemed to me that a large solar array, sized appropriately, could make for a very resilient and extremely long-lived home power system. (Minus the lots of fragile electronics that is the weak spot in so much modern life.)
The electrolyte Is not an acid, it's potassium hydroxide-- lye.. Depending on who you read, it may be necessary to replace the electrolyte every. 8 or 10 years, and you need to top it off with distilled water every month or so( if memory serves) because they do off-gas. Some of Edidons cells are still around and functional -- very long lived.
What grabs me is no battery management system to fail and ruin everything, just simple routine tasks to keep them healthy. As far as I know now, nobody domestic sells them any longer. Too "inconvenient" I guess. But to me, they seem up have an awful lot going for them.
