{"id":37934,"date":"2021-02-22T13:13:32","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T02:43:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/?p=37934"},"modified":"2021-02-22T13:13:32","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T02:43:32","slug":"battery-test-centre-reports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/battery-test-centre-reports\/","title":{"rendered":"Battery Test Centre 8th & 9th Reports: Many Home Batteries Still Unreliable"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Battery

Ronald analyses the latest battery test results just as you like it. This twice-told tale shows the course of true battery love may not run smooth.<\/p><\/div>\n

Do you enjoy reading about home batteries?\u00a0 I know I do.\u00a0 This is why I’m addicted to reports from the Canberra Battery Test Centre.\u00a0 They’re like Shakespeare!\u00a0 That is, they’re mostly tragedy but there’s also some comedy as well. You couldn’t ask for a better demonstration of the best-laid plans of mice and men going awry than the tale they tell of the sky-high failure rate of home batteries.<\/p>\n

The Test Centre’s most recent report was the 9th, which came out in September last year.\u00a0 I’ll quickly cover its highlights and also give some information from their 8th report published in April.\u00a0 Because it has taken me so long to get around to writing on them, I was tempted to hold out for their 10th report, but as I was asked to give an update on their results, here we go.<\/p>\n

The main points I’ll cover are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The most relevant and\/or interesting information from their older Phase 1 and Phase 2 battery testing.<\/li>\n
  2. A description of their latest round of Phase 3 testing and how well\/badly the newest batteries have held up so far.<\/li>\n
  3. Trends identified by the report.<\/li>\n
  4. My own brilliant but brief, conclusion.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    But first, I’ll explain what the Canberra Battery Test Centre is, to bring up to speed anyone who doesn’t know what I’m blathering about.<\/p>\n

    What The Hell Is The Canberra Battery Test Centre?<\/h2>\n

    As you’ve probably guessed, the Canberra Battery Test Centre is a Centre in Canberra that tests batteries.<\/p>\n

    It’s run by ITP Renewables<\/a> who received a fistful of your taxpayer dollars to perform accelerated testing of home battery systems<\/a> and report on how well they perform.\u00a0 They cycle batteries three times a day under controlled temperatures designed to simulate real-world conditions.\u00a0 Each cycle consists of fully charging a battery and then discharging it by the maximum allowed for normal use.<\/p>\n

    The idea is, assuming a battery is cycled an average of once a day in actual use, they can inflict 10 years worth of wear and tear on a battery in around 3 years and 4 months.\u00a0 This approach isn’t perfect, but it’s necessary to do something along these lines if you want information within a reasonable period.<\/p>\n

    A major limitation is they only test one of each type of battery, not counting replacements.\u00a0 This means it’s possible they just happened to get one battery in a thousand that’s defective or possibly the one in a thousand that happens to work as it should.\u00a0 This means if a particular battery performs poorly, it may simply have been bad luck.\u00a0 But given the number of batteries tested so far, it’s safe to conclude home batteries, in general, are unreliable.<\/p>\n

    Past Articles Detail Poor Performance<\/h2>\n

    More details on testing can be found in the four articles I’ve already written on previous Battery Test Centre reports:<\/p>\n