Friday, April 04, 2008

Battery Water

We recently installed a solar power system on a house we own in a very sunny clime. Along with the 12 180W solar panels, we have 16 batteries to store all that electricity from the sun. And those batteries need to be topped off with water - water for batteries: battery water.

Electricity: all by itself it is totally amazing and must rank as one of the great modernizing inventions of humankind, but getting it from the sun? Even more incredible, wonderful, sensible, liberating. And yet....we are still living in a world of conflict and poverty that in many owes itself to our oil/carbon-driven economies. There is so much talk about dependency on oil, so many tax dollars spent to subsidize ethanol - which takes more energy to create then it produces! and is disrupting corn-based food economies....and yet a.

All the technology exists so that at least in sunny environments, governments could lead a major conversion to solar power.

It's all very frustrating. But that's not what I meant to write about in this blog. I want to talk about "battery water" - a very ridiculous scam.

Batteries like the ones we use in our solar power system, and also those used on motorcycles, etc., need to be "topped up" on a regular basis with water. Water that goes in a battery, hence, battery water. Our batteries were getting dry, so we went to a Pep Boys auto store and found a gallon of battery water for $3.99. I looked at the label. It said that the water does not contain any minerals and also that it is "not for human consumption." Wow. Water that people can't or should not drink. And it doesn't contain minerals.

Well, I kind of knew about some other water that doesn't contain any minerals - distilled water. So I went online and looked up information about water that is supposed to go into a battery. And it turns out that this special "battery water" is, indeed, distilled water!

So we went to Walgreen's, where they sold us distilled water for the price of $.99 per gallon. One quarter the price of battery water.

And that is the point of this blog: if you need to put water in your batteries, DO NOT BUY "BATTERY WATER." It is a rip-off and nothing more than a repackaging of distilled water.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

And the truth shall set you free. Do you know how many people BUY the battery water without doing a coupleminute google search. Nice job Steven and post more on how those panels are working for you and what they are running.

Joseph Larkin said...

about to add some water myself. I too am a solar user. I first only used a generator and noticed my deep cells where going dry. In fact may have lost 6 good batteries over it. Found you in my search for battery water. Your research help....