New Batteries

My 50Ah batteries have arrived, both purchased from Battery Superstore though Amazon. Delivery was promised by April 4-9, but they got here March 31-The day after placing the order! Both were double-boxed, arrived in perfect shape, and were fully charged. Amazing!

They're smaller than I had imagined, and should fit easily into the Group 24 boxes that will arrive tomorrow.

Today and Tomorrow are snow days-another 4 to 10 inches of the stuff are due to arrive, followed by another week of well below normal temperatures. It's a good time to get the battery boxes wired up with their Anderson Powerpole connectors. But first I'm going to get my new imaging laptop loaded up with  the software I need to image- BackyardEOS, ImagesPlus, and Astrotortilla. Yes, I'm actually going to join the 21st Century and start using plate solving as part of acquisition!

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I did a few more battery capacity tests, staring with a Duracell Powerpack 600 28Ah portable power supply I'd been given years ago.  The nice thing about this is it has some bells and whistles built into it-radio, light, and inverter. The previous owner said it has been allowed to go dead at least once, so I wasn't terribly hopeful; in fact I was ready to send it off for recycling. It tested out well enough, though: 253 minutes, 15.7Ah. That's about 56% of the stated capacity, which is quite a bit better than either of my old wet lead-acid batteries were able to provide.

I also tested my old 7Ah power supply. I replaced the battery in it several years ago, and it has been used only a few times since then to run a small camping fan when it gets really hot.

After a full charge (or so I thought) it kept the inverter going only 40 minutes during which it produced 2.58Ah. Not very good! I recharged it and let it sit on the charger overnight, then tried it again. The second performance was much better, 71 minutes and 4.42Ah. That's about 63% of the 7Ah capacity. In its capacity as a fan battery it needs to provide only a fraction of an amp, so it will probably do better.

The way the 7Ah battery rebounded after a first draining makes me wonder if I should retest the Duracell. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow.