best place to buy batteries

[df0rster]

I had some Trojan solar batteries ordered on my Renvu system. I've got some items shipped already and was told the batteries had shipped. But yesterday they told me the batteries didn't ship an dwoudnl't ship until August, they said Trojan has some issues at their factory right now.

Anyway, I feel a little misled by them as adding the batteries with the project really helped with shipping cost as ordering them separately would have added a lot of freight to the order, so it helped me decide to order from Renvu. Now I have to find somewhere to order batteries separately and pay twice the freight cost.

I've been looking around but don't see a place with prices as good, and their freight is quite a bit more normally than Renvu. Any suggestions on companies to order batteries from? I had planned on starting with FLA for cheaper upfront and I'm only using for backup so I don't need thousands of cycles necessarily. I've checked around locally and haven't found anything.

Thanks!

[df0rster]

I looked on Missouri wind and Solar, they have descent prices and low freight prices. I may call them to make sure they can get the batteries, or have them in stock.

[chrisski]

I have no idea where you’re located, but after paying freight costs of perhaps $150 for 4 trojan Golf Cart Batteries, I found out some had ordered from a local battery store and had the batteries delivered free to the store and then picked them up.

I got Solar SPRE 255 06 volt. These are basically a golf cart battery, but 3/4 of an inch taller. Done over and sticking with lead acid, I’d really look at the T-105 batteries. I can get those off the shelf in a trailer store by me. They would have also made my design easier when I was looking for a battery box to vent them from. That extra 3/4” tall made them too tall for most boxes until someone told me about a Canadian company.

I also think if I’d called a few more places, I could of special ordered Trojans locally. Actually I emailed, not called. I think that was why I found no one.

If you’re getting one of the other than golf cart sized Trojan batteries, this may not work. I was looking at something like a huge 4 volt battery, but there’s no way that would have fit in my RV and vent it.

[df0rster]

Good info. Are the t-105 batteries as good as the solar batteries? I don’t know much about them. One problem is that Trojan has said they aren’t making the ssig batteries for a while for whatever reason. Not sure if that applies to other batteries or not.

[chrisski]

Are the t-105 batteries as good as the solar batteries?

For my purposes they would have worked. I can't say for sure if T-105s are as good as the solar batteries. The T-105s contain 225 AH instead of 229 AH, so no real difference there. As my first set of batteries for RV solar I take out once a month, I'm sure they would work. Someone told me they got five years out of the T-105s for a solar build, but I don't know if it was with daily or monthly usage. Not sure if I got that from this thread: I love my RV solar system! - Solar Panels - Solar Panels Forum (solarpaneltalk.com), but he uses 4 X T-105s.

Whatever they designed in my Solar SPRE 06 255 made it 3/4 of an inch higher and made it a class GC2H battery, with the H meaning I think high. The T-105s are a little shorter and are a class GC2. So I spent two weeks, among all the other things I was working on, finding a case I could buy that would fit four of them so I could attach a battery vent to it. The extra 3/4 of an inch height made finding a case nearly every impossible. I only found two GC2H cases that were made: one sold by Grainger fitting a GC2H battery comfortable, and another by a company in Canada which just barely fits the batteries.

As much trouble as finding those cases were, my original plan was to go with two Trojan SOLAR SSIG 06 490. I forget the class of batteries the 06 490s were, but I could find noone that manufactured a case for it. After trying to design a custom box out of plywood, the extra 6" of height on those would not have fit in my RV Pass through container, especially after attaching the 2" RV battery vent tubes. Those would have been decent batteries for a house, but not in the pass through storage for my RV.

Never was my goal to stick with lead acid forever, but to eventually upgrade to lithiums. What will make me change to lithiums is should I decide a 24 volt upgrade on my RV. I would want 50% more watt hours in my battery for that, and I couldn't just add on to a used lead acid bank by adding more batteries. Soonest I see this happening is next year, probably 2 years. I do want to enjoy all the work I've done on this so far.

[khanh dam]

www.batteryhookup.com sometimes has used lion or lifepo4 for cheaper than new SLA

or maybe you can buy one of those solar lighting trailers on ebay from the DC Solar auction (dc solar was a ponzi scam that the feds shut down and sold off al assetts)
the parts on them are worth a lot for those that are solar savy. from the yellow SMA 48v inverters, to the batteries and solar panels.