this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023
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Offgrid living
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about a decade ago, did a homestay in Thailand where the whole household was powered by a “battery bank” (the floor of one of the rooms was covered by something like 30 to 40 car batteries linked together)
at a low point in my life, unable to replace expensive batteries, I tried using some "bad" batteries with a shorted cell. I figured, if a three-cell battery still has two that are good, then putting three two-cell batteries in series should be as good as putting two three-cell batteries in series! In practice, when one cell goes bad, the others are not far behind. One ends up with a lot of dead batteries to manage. But of course the dead ones look just like the good ones with casual inspection - I bet the Thailand battery farm was not as powerful as it looked!
certainly no two batteries matched, but then they were only looking for enough power to make up the slack in during the night when the local power grid switched off (enough to keep some fans running and a couple safety lights) – beyond that, they had a huge advantage that the whole community helped to coordinate battery swaps, pick ups, recharging, repairs, deliveries, etc.