If you don’t find any great surplus deals, I have been happy with Concorde Sun Xtender 104 or 108 Ah AGM batteries. Any Concorde/Lifeline dealer should be able to get them in a couple days, I have one within driving distance so I go get them and avoid shipping costs. Normal price is around $300, less if you buy a bunch.
If you are buying a whole bunch of them, an alternative is 8D marine batteries (e.g. Lifeline). Heavy, but thank goodness for rope handles. If you are putting them on shelves, front-terminal telecom batteries can make life easier. I don’t know how to correctly estimate AGM battery life. I have various Lifeline, Sun Xtender and Northstar batteries (all made in USA) in service for 5+ years and no signs of wearing out. Normally with the standard batteries that go inside a UPS, I change them after 2-3 years because I know they will short out or swell up and fail. I am hesitant to do that at sites with $2000 worth of batteries, probably just do a load test a couple times a year. There seems to be a big difference in quality between the cheapest batteries and the ones they sell to carriers for remote terminals. From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Colin Stanners Sent: Thursday, February 2, 2017 7:17 PM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Particularly good recent battery deals? I'm careful of possibly aged-on-shelf batteries as well, but our purchasing from TelecomSurplus has been great so my first assumption would be that these are OK - best to contact them and ask. On Feb 2, 2017 6:40 PM, "Eric Kuhnke" <eric.kuh...@gmail.com <mailto:eric.kuh...@gmail.com> > wrote: Pretty suspicious of "surplus" batteries that have been sitting around self discharging for a long time. Sunelec.com is selling Outback 106RE batteries (12V 100Ah) at $185 ea. On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 4:19 PM, Colin Stanners <cstann...@gmail.com <mailto:cstann...@gmail.com> > wrote: TelecomSurplus recently mailed: C&D Technologies TEL Long Duration Series Batteries 100 Ah AGM with Front Access In Stock & Ready to Ship! On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 6:11 PM, Eric Kuhnke <eric.kuh...@gmail.com <mailto:eric.kuh...@gmail.com> > wrote: Looking for a bunch of 12V 100Ah AGM top terminal batteries for off grid PV. Wondering if anyone has recently got a particularly good deal for something like the Trojan T31 or similar.
