<intro/housekeeping 0:00 –6:35>
Jack Spirko: With that we have a housekeeping wrapped up and I'm stoked. I am so stoked about the show. I would say more, I'm stoked about the two shows together. The complete complete package here. I came to Steve with a simple challenge. I want to build this mobile backup power system in my truck, in the toolbox, and I'm a put this together with the fuel reserves toolbox and all. I am going to have this mobile power station. I know how to do 95% of it perfectly. I want the X factor. I want over the top. I want it to also do solar. I want to isolated off the front charging system, so the two batteries banks are not competing for energy. I can do that. I want to do it right. I wanted to be perfect. I want this to be awesome. Then Steve says, "Sure, I can do that." He puts together over five hours of video. That after these two podcast, you can buy if you want to, for like $24.95 or something like that. I think he is going to sell it for $35, but for you guys for $25 basically. He puts together over three hours of material here on the air. He starts out with "Lets start with batteries and let's select our batteries." He goes all the way to building the mobile power station by the end of tomorrow show. You're about to get an education in backup power systems, you probably wouldn't get in an entry-level college course, that you would pay a lot of money for. You are about to get that for free. You're to have the opportunity support what Steve does at the end if you want. Pictures of every single thing, five hours of video, wiring diagrams of everything, if you want to add that to this at the end. Steve, he's a trooper. He always bust his ass for this audience. I can tell you for a fact, that nobody puts more effort into prep for the show than Steve. This is something he put together over a month. I'm really excited. I just want to thank him as he comes on the air. And say hey Steve man, welcome back to the survival podcast buddy.
<8:27>
Steven Harris: Thanks Jack, I'm thrilled to be back. I'm really thrilled to be delivering this content to all of your listeners. We got some really outstanding, put your hands on it, do it right now stuff that will answer so many questions for people.
<8:42>
Jack Spirko: You know, I've been kind of pumping this one up for a while. I have people that are basic chomping at the bit, can't wait for this show. The way it came about was, I decided I wanted to build a battery backup system in my truck. I knew I could do it like 90% right. You would give it that 10% x-factor that takes it over the top. What you have done is beyond what I even expected. A lot of people are going to listen to this at first and go, well you did us a show on telling us how to power your house from your car with an inverter. How is the home battery bank different.
<9:19>
Steven Harris: It's pretty easy and straightforward to power part of your house from your car. You can hook up and you can run lights, fans, TV, radio, etc. The home battery bank is designed to be at home, in one spot. Nice and warm in the winter, nice and cool in the summer. Ready to give you the power you need for the basics at any time. While powering your house off your car is great and I love it and I advocated tremendously. That car might have to leave. It might have to take someone someplace or you might be not be home at the time when the power fails. Then there you are left in the dark. A battery bank is your own personal energy supply at home, ready to go 24/7. The batteries, you have at home, can be many times the size of the single battery that's in your car. You can put together a battery bank from golf cart batteries from Sam's Club and have a battery bank that's easily 10 to 20 times the energy that is in your one single car battery that is in your car. The battery bank supplement your car power very well. In fact, you can recharge it off your car when needed. Most of all it's there all the time for when you need it. Plus, having a battery bank at home allows you to run like a submarine. I say this all the time. In the morning you turn on your generator. You cool down your refrigerator, You cool down your freezer. You brew a bunch of coffee. You put some food in the microwave. You run your well pump. You take a shower, you take a warm shower if you got national gas heater. Then at the same time you're dumping energy into your battery banks, while your generator is running. After an hour or 2 or 3 of the generator powering, you turn off your generator in the morning and you run silent run deep on just your batteries. You light the house with them. You recharge your AA and AAA batteries and flashlights and your headlamps. You watch a small LCD digital TV or you listen to the radio. You run a small fan keep yourself cool. The main point is, you run generator in the morning and/or you run your generator in the evening. One or both. You do all your stuff. Put energy in your banks, then you run silent run deep.
<11:33>
Jack Spirko: I have seen all different ways that people build battery banks. I'm sure you're getting give us the best practices when it comes to selecting what types of batteries that we actually want to use. I have seen people use everything from harvested out of junk cars, to batteries are supposed to be specifically for the application, marine batteries, deep cranking batteries, etc. How did people know what are the best battery to pick out for building a back up battery system.
<12:03>
Steven Harris: I've got three major things I'm going to teach you. I made some great new tools to help you understand this in detail. First, I am going to talk about selecting the correct battery for you and your application. Do you want to a flooded lead acid battery? A sealed lead acid battery? Do you want to absorb glass mat or an AGM battery? Which battery is right for you? What is the acid safety with each battery? Which one is best for your children in your house, or your apartment, etc? Then we're going to take the battery you select and we are going to make a home battery bank with it. In fact, I know how this famous photograph of a battery on my kitchen table in my house, powering all sorts of things. Did you see that photo, Jack?
<12:45>
Jack Spirko: Yeah, look like electronic octopus times four. It was everything you can think of. Every gadget and gizmo out there pluged into this on battery.
<12:54>
Steven Harris: My wife was going, "What are you doing with my iPad? What are you doing with my iPhone? Where is it."
<12:59>
Jack Spirko: It looked like you literally went through your house and found everything you could charge electronically and just looked it up to make a point.
<13:05>
Steven Harris: Yeah, I did. There is an android tablet, iPad, android phone, iPhone, police scanner, AA battery charger, AM/FM radio, two desk lamps, AA headlamp, and I also did one with a little mini TV. All off of one marine battery sitting there, just sipping the energy. That photo has got a lot of traction to it. Now I'm going to teach you on this show how to make a mobile battery bank. One that is mounted in your vehicle, just like Jack said that he wanted. Like in an across bed toolbox in your pickup. No matter where you go, you have a least 1500 W or more of power for anything you want to run. All the way up to and including one of my favorite electric high power devices, an electric chainsaw. This battery bank gets recharged as you drive down the road. Then when you stop, you can use it. Or if you want you can drive down the road and bake bread with one of my favorite bread makers in the bed of the truck, two or three of them at the same time if you want. This is ideal for TSP disaster response teams you were talking about, Jack.
<14:15>
Jack Spirko: I think this is a great for that. A lot of the field level members. Right now we are still in the formation stages with that. We set up a board of directors and we're setting up kind of a command-and-control central of the people, that are mostly going to be stationary and doing the comm's during this. The people that are out there as responders, that are going to be going out and actually helping people. You saw the pictures, Steve right? Of people in New York City that were, you know, ecstatic just because someone ran a power strip out their window. You know 10 members of the team showing up with 10 trucks with mobile power. Especially if you accompany that with small inverter generators, is another backup redundancy. You could bring in a lot of power with that. For me personally I want for that, but I like the hunt, I like to fish, and I go to some doggon remote areas. Having that kind of power on demand at all times is absolutely something that I have wanted to do for a long time. I had a few concerns about separation from the main batteries in the vehicle. Make sure that it is isolated right. Then I said hell man, throw solar on top of that. You've done the whole thing, right?
<15:22>
Steven Harris: I've done the whole thing and every moment of every day, I've been working on this for last five weeks. I was always saying to myself, "How was someone else going to repeat this? Did I show it to you correctly so you can do it? How was someone in the disaster response team going to be using this? Did I put in enough tools? Did I put in enough backup? Did put in enough meters? Did I make it so your average normal person, who heard the podcast and put together a battery bank, will they know everything that's going on? Or will your wife or your brother or whoever is helping you, working with you, know exactly what's going on just by looking at the battery bank?" And I'll get into that. Boy, I mean since Jack brought out this disaster response team thing, I really kept that in my mind with everything I'm telling you today and what I have done in the video. I'm going to teach you everything you could possibly know, right here right now on TSP, about making a battery bank for your homework or for your vehicle. All this of course is 100% free. It's my charity. It's the way I give back to you. I'm not leaving anything out of this. However this show is only about two hours long and you're just listening to me talk about how to do this. If you want to see me do this, then I have something for you. I have also made three videos that go with this podcast. All total they are about four hours long and I'll show you everything I'm talking about step-by-step, part by part, every example from big battery banks to small betterment banks. You see me do everything. At the end of the show I'll tell you all about the video and you can get the video if you so desire. This podcast will be enough for you. If you want more there is the video. If you're listening on the computer right now and you want to follow along and see some of the things Jack and I are talking about. You can go to
www.Battery1234.com. I made a special site just for this battery show. Solar1234.com was getting a bit full. If you want to see what we are talking about go over there. If not you can see you later. That is enough of my sales pitch, go ahead Jack.
<17:45>
Jack Spirko: On the sales pitch I just want to reiterate, I called Steve on the phone 30 days ago. I said, "Hey man build this." And he did. Like I said, beyond my wildest dreams. I think the video product is going to be something you guys really want to look at. Let's get into. Let's get stuck into, as Geoff Lawton would say. How many choices do we have when it comes to building our battery banks for the house, as far as battery types?
<18:09>
Steven Harris: Jack, there are three major types of batteries we're going to talk about. These are the three major types you really have to select from. I am not going to have any NASA batteries in here. This is all Walmart stuff. One, flooded lead acid batteries. What is a flooded lead acid battery? These are the standard car and marine batteries or golf cart batteries you are used to see every day. The second type of battery is a sealed lead acid battery these are also called SLA batteries. This are the ones that are in small electric cars, like your daughter drives little pink Barbie Jeep around. These are what's in them. They are what is in your security alarm panel. There in the emergency exit signs. There like a plastic brick with two terminals on them. They are also in your deer feeder. They are also the same type of come in those battery boxes, or jump boxes that you can buy that you use to jumpstart your car. Those are using sealed lead acid batteries. The third type of battery that we are going to talk about tonight is absorbed glass mat batteries, also known as AGM batteries. These are sealed up as well, but there's so safe you can actually carry one on the commercial jetliner legally. This is a highest-quality battery you'll get and they are the most 100% acid the safe. The AGM is 100% safe to have with kids around the AMG battery. You could jump on it. you can roll on them. You can roll the thing like a bowling ball.
<19:41>
Jack Spirko: What about other types of batteries that we hear about sometimes for home battery banks? Nickel iron, nickel metal hydride, lithium ion batteries, and the Luke Skywalker lightsaber battery. What about those?
<19:52>
Steven Harris: What is comes down to is I have to give you, here on the show, what works now. What is 100% reliable. 100% proven. 100% we know it's going to do what it needs to when it's hot, when it's cold, when you drain the thing all the way down. I have to give you stuff that is mass manufactured at the cheapest prices and the stuff you're going to find it locally. You are going to find it in your Walmart, in your RadioShack, online at Amazon. I got to give you that stuff. Lead acid technology batteries are the only batteries that qualify for the descriptions. Nickel Iron, a lot of people have asked me about this. Let me get into it briefly. Also called NiFe cells, because Ni is for nickel, Fe is the periodic table element symbol for iron, ferrous. Right now there are only two places in the entire world to get a nickel iron battery. One is in China and they are literally 10 times the price of a darn good lead acid battery. In fact I got a whole presentation on Zello the other night, just on nickel iron batteries because someone asked. Nickel metal hydride batteries, this is the same technology that is used your AA or AAA rechargeable batteries, we talk about before. These are best suited just for that. nickel metal hydride technology suited for smaller batteries and not large battery banks like what we're going talk about tonight. They do not make 50 pound nickel metal hydride batteries. Nor chargers for them. As far as lithium-ion goes, what you're going to see that might take over the battery market in the future, very distant future, are the lithium technology batteries. One of these types of lithium polymer batteries or LiPo batteries. These batteries are used in model RC planes, car, and helicopters. They also have a tendency to wildly catch fire if you overcharge them. Then there are lithium iron phosphate battery, sometimes called LIP batteries. If you listening to this podcast in year 2022 and you just might be listening to this in the year 2022. That is a heck of a statement isn't it, Jack.
<22:07>
Jack Spirko: <laughs> I think you will have the opportunity to.
<22:10>
Steven Harris: If you are listening to this 2022 and it is 2012 right now December. This might be an option for you but right now they're over 10 times price of a sealed lead acid battery.
<22:23>
Jack Spirko: Yeah. That is why I through in the little comment about the Luke Skywalker lightsaber battery. It is amazing where technology is going. I look at lithium-ion, especially some stuff coming out in power tools and I have upgraded some of my power tools and it is an immense difference. But there's things that do the job right and right now for this type of application. I think you zeroed in on all three of them. Lets get into the first type of it, the lead acid battery. The flooded lead acid battery actually. For folk that don't understand what that means, what does it mean to be flooded?
<22:55>
Steven Harris: It means to be full of liquid acid. It means you can take something off the top of your battery and you can look down into it and actually see the lead oxide plates and the liquid sulfuric acid above the plates. It is a Sulfuric acid and water mixture in the battery. You can put your finger into that hole and burn yourself on the acid. It's a flooded liquid battery. You can spill it. You can spill your blue jeans as I did making this video. It'll eat a hole through your jeans. Not right away but it will do it overnight.
<23:30>
Jack Spirko: I'll tell you what, it happened to us in the military. You'd always end up with T-shirts with little holes in them, form around your waist level because that's where the battery boxes were on the trucks. You didn't think you got anything on you, but sooner or later you would end up trashing those T-shirts.
<22:55>
Steven Harris: I got a picture of it in the video. It is a bunch of little holes on the bottom area of my blue jean pants, because that's where I had little drops of acid drop onto it when I show you in the video how to use a hydrometer and test the batteries. Going back to flooded lead acid there are even big huge versions of these batteries called telecom batteries. They're so big. They are about 3 feet tall and there 2 V each. They weigh over 400 pounds each. You need six of them to make 12 V. Which is what a 12 V lead acid battery really is. It is six 2 V batteries inside one case and connected together internally to make up 12 V. Remember this, each 2 V battery in the 12 V box, is its own little battery, it has its own plates, its own acid and everything. That's why there is six holes on top of a 12 V battery, so you can added distilled water to them or check the acid concentration. These batteries only like to work standing up, right side up. You can't turn them upside down. The acid would leak out. You can't put them on their side. They have to remain up.
<24:56
Jack Spirko: Absolutely, what about batteries that don't have any holes. No acid to worry about. They call them maintenance-free or something like that.
<25:05
Steven Harris: Maintenance free, is actually a version of a flooded lead acid battery. We shouldn't confuse them the maintenance free with the sealed lead acid batteries. The maintenance free batteries are basically flooded lead acid batteries with the caps on so tight they will never come off or no caps at all. Those are really like the previous one we talked about. If you want truly a battery that is completely sealed, these are our second type of lead acid batteries we're going to talk about. They are called SLA batteries, for sealed lead acid batteries. The acid inside of this one is actually a gel. Which is why the call Gel Cells or they used to be called that. SLA is a more common term right now. These can operate right side up upside, down on the side, on there side, on there end, doesn't matter.
<25:56>
Jack Spirko: I have got one of those jump packs. It has battery inside of it and I can hook it up my vehicle and give it a jump start if i need to. What kind of battery did you say was in those?
<26:05>
Steven Harris: That would be the Gel Cell, Jack. That would be the one we were just talk about. You have to be really really careful with those jump packs. I really, me personally, kind of hate those things because they install a fault sense of security into people. I think horrible and deadly. Just because you can hook it up to your car and started it, people now think they have a lightsaber in their hands. And they have infinite amount of power and they can plug it and run everything in our house. After all it started it started my car didn't it? These jump packs even come with built-in tools, like an air compressor, flashlight, inverter. The truth is that there is not hardly a worst thing you can get for your energy preparedness than one of of these. Now get this... They are made in China and so are the batteries. By the time the batteries are made in China and then the batteries are sent to the other factory in China. And then are made into a nice fancy jumper box case in China with all the toys. By the time it gets onto a container. And then go onto a boat. And then go across the Pacific. And then clears customs to go into a storage house for the store it is going to finally go to. And then finally rides on truck to the store to go on the shelf. That can easily be over a year. That has been a year with the battery only having a partial charge on it when it left the factory. Having a battery partially charge for year and losing power each month is called self discharge. It is what kills a battery. This gel cell miracle lightsaber of energy only might have a real life of two or three years associated with it. Already you're getting into it with a year off of its life. You're not going to discover that it's only going to work for 30 minutes, until your 31 minutes into your disaster. These are also the same batteries used in backup power supply for computers, UPS. Lots of people have asked me, and that's why it's in here, about using a UPS of the emergency back up for a disaster. First, they usually beep like crazy when the power fails. I don't know if you want to listen to that, but I don't. Second, if you are getting them used and old, they probably are old and don't have a lot of life left him. Three, they're designed a hold up a computer for 10 minutes so you can shut it down and turn it off. Rather than it just crashing and power off correctly. They're up and running for 10 minutes not 10 hours. BEEP BEEP BEEP.
<28:46>
Jack Spirko: I have a extremely over built UPS, but even with that it is to run my computer. It is to run my modem. It is to run my audio recorder. For instance right now, while we already have this much of this awesome show recorded. If the power just went <bah-swoosh> we don't lose it all. I've had that happen once and in things usually only happen to me once before they never happen again, without a redundancy put in place. That will run my computer and etc, everything here for a whopping hour without really taxing it. After that you got to go to something else. That's what that's for. That's not for running your freaking house and charging your cell phone. It is just not designed to do that. I am completely with you. Now, on the gel cells. How big are the gel cell that are sold? What are the biggest ones we can get.
<29:41>
Steven Harris: This is where it really starts to separate itself and makes it kind of a non candidate for us. There generally sold in a much smaller size. Like I said for your deer feeder or for your emergency lights system or your UPS. They are like the size of a brick. Like I said they go into an alarm system or deer feeder. They do make them up to a 100 ampere hours in size and we talk about what an ampere hour is shortly. The biggest gel cells, pretty much where the flooded acid batteries starts out so the biggest gel cell is close to the size of a small flooded lead acid battery. Also you find out these larger gel cells – or sealed lead acid batteries – are sometimes, they’re also called VRLA batteries. When they’re bigger, they will be 2.5, 3.5 times the price of a good, deep cycle marine battery. What you are finding in the market is that the gel cells used to have the bigger size. The bigger gel cells, the 100 ampere hour to 75 ampere hour gel cells, kind of like the one that might be in Jack’s oversized UPS. They’re being replaced by Absorbed Glass Matt batteries, or AGM batteries.
<30:57>
Jack Spirko: Yeah, on the AGM, that’s the third type of battery you said you were going to talk about. You said they’re the safest. And I don’t think we see a better example of this than I just did a feature on a guy that built a Kawasaki motorcycle into an electric motorcycle, runs up to 50 miles per hour. He’s got a range on it of about 30 miles and it uses three of the AGMs and the biggest reason he picked those was he could put them in there sideways or upside down and make them fit in the frame.
<31:20>
Steven Harris: True true. In fact, AGM batteries were first invented go into fighter jets.
<31:28>
Jack Spirko: Okay. That would make sense, you gotta go upside-down in one of those.
<31:30>
Steven Harris: Upside-down, rightside up, lots of vibration, lots of abuse. AGMs can really take abuse really good. AGMs are fast, vastly taking over the market that the larger gels had. AGM batteries are sealed up as well. They can operate-upside down, rightside up, underside, any position like a gel cell but inside they’re different. They have a fiberglass mat between lead oxide plates of the batteries and the acid is absorbed into the glass mat, thus AGM. And it stays there. And the battery is sealed and nothing is going to leak out. These are the most acid safe batteries you’re going to get. If you have kids that might get into a Marine battery, which not likely,you gotta pop the top with a screwdriver, or they might open the top of golf cart batteries, which is really easy, then you'll want to go with the AGM batteries. Again – you got kids, AGM. Also because nothing will be leak out of an AGM battery they can be shipped by UPS or anyone else with no hazmat, no hazardous material fees. I don't want to going into the chemistry of the batteries in this show and whether you have a lead acid battery with cadmium or antimony alloy plates, but the AGMs have a little better chemistry than the flooded lead acid batteries and of course by the very nature but also considered to be a deep cycle battery. So the AGM is a little better chemistry and great for vibration, acid safe, but they’re going to be a little bit more expensive.
<33:10>
Jack Spirko: Yeah, now most things in life, the more features, benefits, and things you add to it, especially when they’re real, the higher the price goes. How do they compare in price to lead acid?
<33:19>
Steven Harris: The AGM, well the AGMs are also lead acid batteries, okay. So AGM batteries compared to flooded lead acid batteries.
<33:27>
Jack Spirko: That’s what I meant. A flooded battery.
<33:29>
Steven Harris: Like the Marine battery. Sorry I'm just one those exact people, Jack. Because boy, the listeners will pick up on it and they’ll email me “Did you mean to say that? Did you mean to say that?” so I got to be exact with you guys. The AGM batteries are about twice the price of a good one flooded acid marine battery. So they’re significantly affordable, they’re only double the price, because a regular Marine battery is really pretty damn affordable. Have you seen those batteries with the round cylinders in them? You know, it’s not a square battery, it’s like six round cylinders? Those are made by a company called Optima, and they are one of the more famous lead acid AGM batteries. I do have them on the Battery1234 website and you can actually have Amazon ship them directly to your house. You can also find Optima batteries on the shelf of Sam's Club but watch out. They probably won't be the group 31 size which is the largest traditional side of the battery as the ones I have listed for Amazon. So you’ve got to be careful about the number of ampere hours you have in the battery. Again, I'm going to cover group size and ampere hours with you shortly. Odyssey is also an excellent manufacturer AGM batteries. Duracell has a very nice line of AGM batteries and they’re sold off the shelf at Sam's Club. As of December 2012 I've not seen any AGM batteries on the shelf Walmart disappointing but I'm sure they’ll show up. Duracell AGMs at Sam's Club are the best AGMs with the most energy at the lowest price. That's from the pricing I've done for you. I have a side note here, Jack, and mentioning something regarding preparedness that I personally find is just amazing, especially since we just went through Hurricane Sandy. An optimized AGM battery weighs 60 pounds and if you're on an Amazon prime member they will ship that 60 pound battery to you overnight to your front door by UPS air overnight for a total shipping charge of $4. Overnight shipping.
<35:33>
Jack Spirko: If you want, say, two or more of them to make a battery bank with, your Prime membership just got paid for because I don’t know anybody out there, if you ever shipped something that’s sixty pounds even in regular freight, it ain’t cheap.
<35:45>
Steven Harris: Yep. You can get things shipped to you by two-day for nothing, by one day for $4 if you’re an Amazon prime member which cost $79 a year and that's an Amazon prime object you’re buying, which means it's actually an Amazon warehouse. Which means they warranty everything for 30 days. You can return anything for any reason for 30 days. So my point is I sent an email out three or four days before Hurricane Sandy hit and I warned everyone and it’s amazing to think that people who were not prepared, who did not have a battery, a battery charger or inverter or any other preparedness supply, they could order an inverter, a battery or two, and ordered them all off Amazon.com and UPS will deliver them the next day for $4 per item and this is when everyone is at all your local store shelves raping and pillaging everything it’s all gone. Amazon and UPS will deliver it to you in a day. I just think that is just an amazing statement.
<36:55>
Jack Spirko: You know, and I think that that begs a reiteration of something I try to tell people all the time. That everybody's worried about the end of the world as we know it, the apocalypse, a total economic collapse and I’m not saying none of that stuff can never happen, we talk about it realistically here . We always have to keep in mind disaster preparedness in order of probability and the less people that are going to be affected by a disaster the more likely you as an individual are to experience it. you're a heck of a lot more likely to find yourself in the eye of a coming storm than you are riding down the road fighting Mad Max. I never really looked at it that way, Steve. That having that membership is like kind of, you know, if you realize you need something, being able to get it quick but not having to go out to get it, that's pretty cool.
<37:42>
Steven Harris: I think it is. Also Amazon.com sells food too.
<37:48>
Jack Spirko: That’s true!
<37:49>
Steven Harris: I’m serious, it’s like Cosco. You can't buy one jar peanut butter, you got to buy a small case of six. But my mother is 74 years old now and she’s fine, she drives, she goes to the grocery store. But in the winter time when it's cold and everything else and she doesn't want to carry too much, I have all the stuff that she normally eats dropped off by UPS at her house from Amazon. So when she goes to the grocery store it’s just for butter and milk and eggs.
<38:15>
Jack Spirko: Now that is something very important for people to think about too. Because I hear people all the time, “I’ve got a grandmother, or whatever, that’s far away.” And that’s really not something I’ve really thought about. And I do order food there once in awhile because there’s certain things... I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to buy oriental fish sauce in Hot Springs, Arkansas but it ain’t easy. Anyway, we’ll get back on the topic. But it’s a very good point, Steve.
<38:39>
Steven Harris: I just want to make a side point for you guys, I think it’s an amazing tool. Stuff can show up on day one or two before the storm hits. I want to recap what we talked about because it was kinda technical. There are three types of lead-acid batteries. One, there are flooded lead-acid batteries, which are our regular car, marine, and golf cart type batteries. These are the most affordable. Two, there are sealed lead-acid batteries, also called gel cells. They are more for backup power for small electronic systems and lights. Three, there absorbed glass mat or AGM batteries, that are the most acid safe batteries out there. If you have kids, you’ll be getting these and they are only about twice the price of a flooded lead-acid battery. And again, UPS will ship them to your door. You are going to have to pick between one of these three batteries for what you are going to use for your personal battery bank. I think there is only an option for you to pick between the regular flooded battery and an AGM. It comes down to will your kids get into the battery acid or won't they?
<39:50>
Jack Spirko: Fair enough. So you don’t think there's enough of a performance advantage in an AGM to make it worth the cost. It's more the safety issues, is that what you’re saying?
<39:57>
Steven Harris: I'm saying is a tremendous safety issue.
<40:01>
Jack Spirko: But it's not about performance, it’s about safety.
<40:04>
Steven Harris: Yeah, it's not about performance. The AGM, let's say, might be 10% to 25% better performance.
<40:09>
Jack Spirko: If I don't even worry about the safety, I can get 10% to 25% better performance, into 100% better performance by increasing the size of my bank by a battery.
<40:18>
Steven Harris: You got it exactly.
<40:19>
Jack Spirko: There we go. I’m thinking money. So you mentioned a lot of stuff along the way here like group size, amp hour, depth of discharge, deep-cycle. What does all that stuff mean?
<40:29>
Steven Harris: Well it's like what came first, the chicken or the egg? I wanted to tell you about the chicken first, which is the batteries, before I got into the egg, which is the technical terms because I did not want to bore you at the start of the show. But I have to take a little moment to tell you these important terms so you can make the decision on what battery is best for you when you're standing at the store shelf at Walmart and wondering which one of these 50 batteries do I want to buy. You will know exactly which one you want to buy. So okay, as they say, size matters. Group size. There are actually group sizes from 21 to 98, if you want to be technical. Then there’s industrial and tractor batteries that are called 4Ds and 8Ds. What you're going to find on the shelf at Walmart, AutoZone, Pep Boys, and Amazon are going to be either group size 24, 27, 29, or 31. So that's it, okay? Basically group size 24 is for a small car, 27 is for a midsize car or truck, and group size 29 and 31 are for really big trucks like diesel trucks. Except my pickup truck actually has two group 27s in them, so it's not written in stone. The group size actually refers to just the dimensions of the battery, its average length, width, height. So you know that is going to fit into the hole that is in your car that you’re going to put it in. If you're not going to put it into a hole your car, you want the biggest one you can get, which would be 29 to 31. If you are at Sam's Club or some place of a big selection of marine batteries that you're looking at. Then you're going to have to want buy the biggest one you can get or the biggest one that won't give you a hernia. Those are either going to be group size 29 or 31. 31 is slightly bigger than 29. Group size 29 is the largest group size I can find at Walmart. The Orbital AGMs I have listed on Amazon are group sign 31. If you can't find a group size 31, please get the group size 29. After all, the bigger battery does you no good if you can't get it. A smaller battery is better than no battery. If you can't tell, I think Sam's Club and Walmart are the two best places to buy a marine deep-cycle battery. But Sam's Club only has batteries at their stores in 24 of 50 states, according to their website. Thankfully that includes Alaska and Hawaii where it would be more expensive to ship a battery anyways. Your Sam's Club will have a battery for you. When it comes to golf cart batteries there are GC2, GC8, and GC12. The ones you want are GC2s. Now this is kinda funny. It’s GC2 because you need two of these 6 volt batteries to make 12 volts. GC8 is an 8 volt battery, which is no good for you, and GC12 is a single 12 volt golf cart battery.So a GC2 is because you need two of them to make 12 volts, that’s not because they’re 2 volts, which they aren’t.
<43:46>
Jack Spirko: But yet a GC8 is 8 volts and a GC12 is 12 volts. That’s a genius that came up with that system. So now what about amp hour and reserve capacity, how do I know what these mean? What the battery has the most energy capacity, etc? There's things that are really important and there’s things that are marketing. Like when you go out and buy your wireless modem it says it has 100 Mb capacity and your DSL connection has 1.5 as though it really is important. What are we actually looking at here with what's important? What's really going to make a difference for people?
<44:24>
Steven Harris: This is a little tricky so listen carefully. Actually I have this in the video, it’s a little more visual and illustrative. I think the only way to judge how much energy is in a battery is by ampere hours. Now what is an ampere hour? It's pretty close to this. I have a few numbers, listen carefully, they’re simple. If you have a 100 ampere hour battery, it will give you 10 amps for 10 hours, 10 times 10 is 100, got it? It will give you 20 amps for 5 hours, 20 times 5 is 100. It will give you 33 1/3 amps for 3 hours, and it will give you 50 amps for 2 hours. Now, it's close to this, but not exact because the less energy you pull from a battery the more efficient it is at giving up those amperes to you. Your 10 amp or 10 hours will really last a bit longer than 10 hours. If you’re trying to pull 50 amps from the battery for two hours, you'll never make it because you’re pulling so much current that the battery becomes more inefficient. It just can’t dump that much energy without losing something in the process. It’s like pouring water from one bucket into another. Pour water very slowly and every drop goes from one bucket will go into the other bucket. Spill one bucket of water real quickly into another bucket and the water will splash all over the place and all the water will not make it into the bucket. It is the same with taking energy and putting energy into a battery. Technically this all has to do with internal resistance, surface area of the plates, what lead is alloyed with, and a bunch of other stuff. I’m really trying to give you a rule of thumb and a very sound working knowledge of batteries. Just remember, ampere hour. 100 ampere hour means I can pull 10 amps for 10 hours, 20 amps for 5 hours, 5 amps for 20 hours, 1 amp for 100 hours. That is basically what an ampere hour is.
<46:30>
Jack Spirko: I think that’s great, and I think it’s good to just make it the simple rules of thumb because obviously when we’re building systems we want to overbuild a little bit. We don't want to be going thinking we’re going to actually get exactly that much before we need to something called recharge or provide some sort of other source of energy there. I think that's the best way to make it easy for people and thanks for doing that. Let's move on to one more we see all the time, reserve capacity. I see reserve capacity listed on batteries all the time. What's the deal with reserve capacity?
<47:01
Steven Harris: Yeah, reserve capacity, or RC, will show up most on batteries, More times than you’ll see AH or ampere hours. Many times the batteries won't have ampere hours on it and this is disappointing because someone in the industry decided to try to make this whole thing easy for people so they would know what battery was bigger and what battery was better and all he did was screw the whole thing up royally. The idea was you have a marine deep cycle battery for your boat and your electric trolling motor. The trolling motor will only draw about 25 amps on average. They wanted to tell the person looking at the battery in the store how long the battery would last in their trolling motor. They would say the reserve capacity is 180 minutes. The trolling motor will run for 180 minutes, that's three hours’ operation. That’s not bad, I can understand that, that makes sense. You think this would be really good, and you’re looking at the shelf and one battery says 180 minutes and one says 210 minutes, you’d know which one would last longer. Different companies doing the marketing are screwing everything up, and you know how it is all about a numbers game. In the battery video I give you a real world example, I'll give it to you here. I have two huge golf cart batteries tied together and they have a reserve capacity of, get this, of 120. Then I have a single marine battery, nowhere near the size of the two huge golf cart batteries, and it’s not 120, it's 210 minutes.
<48:42>
Jack Spirko: It’s all about where the variable comes from.
<48:44>
Steven Harris: That’s right. The big batteries are 120 minutes and the smaller battery is 210. This does not make sense at all. It's because the golf cart battery use a current draw of not 25 but 75 amps to do their calculation for reserve capacity and the marine battery uses the standard 25 amps. The golf cart batteries will last for 120 minutes if you only draw 75 amps from them, and the marine batteries will last almost double that, 210 minutes when you draw only 25 from it. But the golf cart battery very clearly says on the label that the reserve capacity is 120 minutes at 75 amps, it clearly says 75.
<49:24>
Jack Spirko: The numbers are there and to be fair the marketing widgetheads, if you’re buying a golf cart battery for the average golf cart the number’s valid. If you're buying a marine battery for the average trolling motor the number’s valid. When you're doing things like we are and you change the variable, it's not apples to apples at all.
<49:44>
Steven Harris: No. If the battery label does not say how many amps it is, you can assume it to be 25.
<49:49>
Jack Spirko: Okay.
<49:50>
Steven Harris: This is for reserve capacity in minutes, or RC. As I show you in the video, you take the minutes and you multiply it by the amps, and then you always divide by 60. That gives you the ampere hours. Amps times minutes divided by 60, got it? If you do that with 120 minutes at 75 amps and 210 minutes at 25 amps, you get the golf cart batteries to be 150 ampere hours, tada! You get the single marine battery at only 88 ampere hours. Now the truth shines through, but the math looks better in the video.
<50:32>
Jack Spirko: Now you’ve shown us how big the difference between one big battery is than another. How much can I get from the battery? You’ve mentioned the depth of discharge. What is actually a deep cycle battery?
<50:48>
