Battery Experts needed

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Battery Experts needed
Topic Started: Aug 24 2015, 03:12 AM (1,815 Views)
wildie	Dec 1 2016, 05:50 PM Post #91
Veteran Member Posts: 12,173 Group: Member Member #442 Joined: October 11, 2006	Dialtone Dec 1 2016, 02:52 PM wildie Dec 1 2016, 12:43 PM Once I installed a string of battery's used to back up a telephone switching system. The switching system was to be installed in a main frame computer room. I had to install the battery's in an adjacent room as the fumes from gassing would cause corrosion in the computer plug-in connections. Battery fumes are acidic as the electrolyte in lead acid battery's is in fact sulfuric acid (H2SO4) The corrosion from sulfuric acid is well known. Bill, your post reminded me of the time I spent working for a telco equipment installation crew back in my early years. I worked for a while installing Telco switching system batteries, now we're talking batteries. Each one is only 2V but was the size of a bar fridge, weighing in at over 400 lbs each. Telephone switching works on 48V DC, so we had to mount 24 batteries onto 2 strings, a lower and upper tier. To get the batteries onto the stingers, we used a battery lift, and each one had to be perfectly placed and spaced to fit on the rack. Once placed we connected the batteries to each other using bus bars, and then to the rectifiers for initial charge. The batteries used to be made by Gould, but looked a lot like these : http://www.infinityps.net/images/Telecom-Power-Plant-Under-Construction.png . The cable used for large power jobs was 750 MCM, a pure copper cable about 1' in diameter and a 1 foot piece weighs about 5 pounds, the cable reels weighed over a ton and required several people to roll them.. and stop them once they got moving. To bend it, we had special tools, benders, and hammers to force it into corners when laying it onto the cable runway, guys who worked for years on the power crews had arms the size of trees, you didn't mess with them. We worked hard and played hard, those sure were the days. Gawdammit Fred, I wish I had your memory capacity. It was Gould battery's that I installed also. Not as large as central office batteries and weighed a little less than 100 lbs. The down side being that lifts were never available and I had to lift these up on the rack manually. All 20 of them! Northern Telcom used to install the battery's for Bell Telephone and on one occasion a installer dropped a Crescent wrench and it fell across two negative and positive copper bus's. When the wrench fell to the floor, it was burned into 3 pieces. After seeing this wrench, I insulated the handle of my wrenches with electrical tape.



wildie	Dec 1 2016, 06:06 PM Post #92
Veteran Member Posts: 12,173 Group: Member Member #442 Joined: October 11, 2006	campy Dec 1 2016, 03:01 PM I'm starting to think that the battery charger I showed has a variable voltage input depending on the battery it is charging. A charging battery is a varible load. And they have internal resistance. Discharged, they appear to the power source as low resistance and as the charge comes up, the resistance becomes higher. In series electrical circuits, when designing a charger, the designer must take into consideration the internal resistance of the charger, the resistance of the electrical conductors and the internal resistance of the battery, itself. In a series circuit, voltage drop across these resistances will change as the battery becomes charged and its internal resistance increases. When I was at the university, on some occasions I had to build D.C. rectifiers for special purposes.



campy	Dec 1 2016, 06:41 PM Post #93
Handyman Extraordinaire Posts: 28,720 Group: no politics Member #204 Joined: February 2, 2006	So . Summing up panel. Does that charger I have output 12.22 volts all the time or does it adjust to the condition of the battery? Inquiring minds want to know.



Dialtone	Dec 2 2016, 04:54 AM Post #94
Gold Star Member Posts: 7,190 Group: Member Member #721 Joined: April 1, 2010	wildie Dec 1 2016, 05:50 PM Gawdammit Fred, I wish I had your memory capacity. It was Gould battery's that I installed also. Not as large as central office batteries and weighed a little less than 100 lbs. The down side being that lifts were never available and I had to lift these up on the rack manually. All 20 of them! Northern Telcom used to install the battery's for Bell Telephone and on one occasion a installer dropped a Crescent wrench and it fell across two negative and positive copper bus's. When the wrench fell to the floor, it was burned into 3 pieces. After seeing this wrench, I insulated the handle of my wrenches with electrical tape. I worked for Northern Electric (before it was called Northern Telecom), for about 7 yrs, joined in 1967. For a young single guy, it was a great company and in later life I used to say I went to Northern University due to all the courses and training they provided. I worked in many places from Ontario west, a great way to see the country and all expenses paid. I worked mainly in the Central Office switching division, installing #5 X-Bar and I took to it like a duck to water becoming a 5 index test technician in a short time. I still have contact with a few of the guys I used to work with in Alberta and Ontario. It's unfortunate Northern Electric had to change, it was an incredible company until John Roth imposed his vision, and it was decimated. Edited to add, even today I have any wrenches I use for anything electrical taped. Once you see the power of amperage even at low voltage, you gain tremendous respect for electricity in all it's forms. Edited by Dialtone, Dec 2 2016, 05:05 AM.



Delphi51	Dec 2 2016, 07:59 AM Post #95
Member title Posts: 13,967 Group: Administration Member #441 Joined: October 10, 2006	Wow, what a battery! Your story brought back a memory for me. I worked a couple of summers as a power plant operator filling in for guys taking holidays. I was told very firmly to stay away from a cage with bus bars like railroad rails. The order was even firmer than hot stick practise because one of the guys working in there had set his crescent wrench on the bus bars. It must have exploded because he had extensive injuries and was off work for months. I can't recall if the bus bars connected to batteries or were on the generator output. It was a gas turbine plant in a fairly remote area. The only phone service was to the Shell gas plant close buy and our guy working alone managed to make a call for help.



Delphi51	Dec 2 2016, 08:07 AM Post #96
Member title Posts: 13,967 Group: Administration Member #441 Joined: October 10, 2006	campy Dec 1 2016, 06:41 PM So . Summing up panel. Does that charger I have output 12.22 volts all the time or does it adjust to the condition of the battery? Inquiring minds want to know. Modern quality chargers have two or three stages of charging with different voltages. I think older ones did not. However, the output voltage would depend on the current being drawn. A larger current would cause a voltage drop on the transformer, diodes and any resistances. The current will be highest when the battery charge is lowest, diminishing to near zero as the battery reaches full charge unless the charger has an unusually high voltage. Edited by Delphi51, Dec 2 2016, 08:10 AM.



campy	Dec 2 2016, 12:36 PM Post #97
Handyman Extraordinaire Posts: 28,720 Group: no politics Member #204 Joined: February 2, 2006	Well the voltmeter shows 12.22 volts. So that's practically a trickle charger. I will have to hook up the voltmeter to determine the output when the battery is being charged.



wildie	Dec 2 2016, 03:57 PM Post #98
Veteran Member Posts: 12,173 Group: Member Member #442 Joined: October 11, 2006	Dialtone Dec 2 2016, 04:54 AM wildie Dec 1 2016, 05:50 PM Gawdammit Fred, I wish I had your memory capacity. It was Gould battery's that I installed also. Not as large as central office batteries and weighed a little less than 100 lbs. The down side being that lifts were never available and I had to lift these up on the rack manually. All 20 of them! Northern Telcom used to install the battery's for Bell Telephone and on one occasion a installer dropped a Crescent wrench and it fell across two negative and positive copper bus's. When the wrench fell to the floor, it was burned into 3 pieces. After seeing this wrench, I insulated the handle of my wrenches with electrical tape. I worked for Northern Electric (before it was called Northern Telecom), for about 7 yrs, joined in 1967. For a young single guy, it was a great company and in later life I used to say I went to Northern University due to all the courses and training they provided. I worked in many places from Ontario west, a great way to see the country and all expenses paid. I worked mainly in the Central Office switching division, installing #5 X-Bar and I took to it like a duck to water becoming a 5 index test technician in a short time. I still have contact with a few of the guys I used to work with in Alberta and Ontario. It's unfortunate Northern Electric had to change, it was an incredible company until John Roth imposed his vision, and it was decimated. Edited to add, even today I have any wrenches I use for anything electrical taped. Once you see the power of amperage even at low voltage, you gain tremendous respect for electricity in all it's forms. When I left college my first job was working for Northern in Toronto in 1956. I wanted to get out of Toronto and applied to work out of town. It didn't happen, so I quit and found a job with Bell in my home town. With Bell I worked on Tandem Xbar for awhile. I tired of the shift work and quit Bell. Went to Western University and became an electrician. Now that was a job with variety. Everything from elevators, parking gates, fire alarms, security systems, High tension voltage maintenance (4169 volts) theatrical lighting, etc. Even traffic lights! Then I took a job with the Engineering school setting up mechanical demonstrations for the students. The labs were polluted with spilled mercury, so got out of there and found a job installing Northern's SL-1 digital telephone switches. I really enjoyed this job and stayed at it until I retired. Education wise, after college I tallied up about a total of 32 months in the class room. Much if this was attending the Northern Plant school in Bellville ON.



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