Hi all,
I was reviewing different weather stations in different brands and note that many of them are fed only by a small alkaline battery, which must be changed once a year or a little less, according to the station configuration,
This way of feeding the weather station looks very good, as in most of the stations I saw the solar panels are usually stolen causing data loss and other problems.
Campbell Scientific have any option similar to this feeding system (no solar panel)?, Lets say a powerfull battery or a system that allows the system to operate one year or something similar before replacing the battery? Some small battery easy to carry.
Take a look at the BPALK power supply. You can find information at https://www.campbellsci.com/alkaline-batteries
Sorry for the realy delay response, thank you i will cheq the Bpalk
Best Regards!!
Just use a 12v car battery? Or if you need a smaller one use one for a motorcycle. Any Battery store (bateriesplus, etc..) will have wide selection. Powersonic is a brand we use.
Hello
I'm reading past papers and back with the questions I asked a while back that I hope can clarify.
Speaking about the time of battery life (with no means to recharge as a solar panel)what would be the principal difference between an alkaline pack of battery and a gel battery
For example for a weather station system with a drain current
of 0.00081 A, the alkaline batteries BPALK(12 vdc - 7.5 Ah) theoretically last:
7.5 Ah/0.00081 A = 9259 hrs or about 385 days
What is the advantage of using alkaline batteries instead of using only gel battery 12Vdc 7Ah or 7.5Ah? If both types of batteries are of the same capacity should last the same before replacing the battery?
More so if the batteries are alkaline will I buy new to replace the old but if I use a gel battery could switch to another and recharge the old battery for re-use ?
I hope not to confuse things, in short if alkaline batteries have the same voltage and the same capacity (Ah) to gel rechargeable batteries, why it would be better to use alkaline batteries instead of a gel battery? (considering that there is no solar panel or other means to recharge the batteries)
Thank you
The figure we quote for the alkaline batteries is a highly conservative one dating back many years. Modern D cell batteries often have capacities that are quoted at >2X more than 7.5Ah. The problem is though that such batteries are optimised for relatively high current drains and the manufacturers do not quote the battery life for a 1 mA current drain! They also don't quote the capacity at that current drain for a cut-off point of around 9.5 V (where most of our loggers stops measuring). Nevertheless at room temperatures you could expect over 50-100% more than the capacity we quote from a good quality alkaline battery.
The limitation of alkaline cells is the effective capacity drops of markedly below 0 deg C and the normally quoted lowest operating temperature is -20 C. Lead acid batteries suffer similar problems although will output current to lower temperatures (-30 to -40 deg C if reasonably charged). Their capacity also falls away markedly at low temperatures.
One big disadvantage of lead acid batteries is they tend to have a high internal self-discharge rate, which for the better ones is ~3% of capacity per month at room temp. This is temperature dependent and can be twice this rate at +40 C. The rate can be much higher (up to 5-10X higher) than this for recreation or car batteries. Alkaline batteries lose capacity at something like 10X less than this rate.
The advantage of lead acid is they can be recharged but you have to be careful you do not discharge them too far otherwise they are difficult to recover.
Ok
Is more clear now
Thank you!!!!!