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Bill Dube wrote:
The cost will scale directly with amp-hrs. Figure $50 an amp-hr. The cranking amps scales as $1 per amp. There are discrete increments. 2.2 a-hr and 120 cranking amps.
I think you're on the track of a good product, just like with your LED lights, but since you present this as a market survey I'm going to lay out how I work through it.
It comes in 2.2ah increments at $50 each. I'll need at least 20ah at a 1 hour discharge rate to keep the engine running. I'm assuming all the cranking amps come from low internal resistance, so power delivery will be less dependant on discharge rate (?). For the standard flooded battery, I'm going to have to look at a 30ah battery weighing in at around 30lbs and $80, where I could get away with 22ah of this new technology weighing in at 6.75lbs costing $1,000. The conventional battery would need replacing every two years, so the cost over 10yrs would be $400 vs $1000. I'd most likely loose some or all of the weight advantage from having to add lead to the tail for CG purposes (most of the Delta builders seem to wind up having to do that). But assuming that I got the full weight savings and the battery would really last for 10yrs, that is 23lbs for $600, or $26/lb. It sounds like a winner. Now the questions are:
-Can I trust new technology to work as advertised for 10yrs in a highly stressful environment? If it has to be replaced in 5 or 6 years due to any number of reasons from simple environmental stresses resulting from poor installation up to and including a landing accident, then the ROI disappears.
-Would the ROI be higher if I run conventional batteries for the first two years and wait for the early adopters to drive the price down? New technology tends to drop to half price just as soon as the manufacturing capacity gets up to speed. 20 real amps for a solid hour might not be so bad at $500. It's a no-brainer at the $200 price point.
-Can the battery actually deliver its power at that rate without using a large percentage of its energy to heat its own acid?
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,|"|"|, Ernest Christley |
----===<{{(oQo)}}>===---- Dyke Delta Builder |
o| d |o www.ernest.isa-geek.org |
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