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Old 11-22-2015, 09:45 PM   #12 (permalink)
elhigh
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Quick update

Went to Ace and spent $20. Picked up a couple of lampholders and incandescent bulbs.

There are no incandescent bulbs in my house except two places: the fridge and the oven. And when the bulb in the fridge dies, it'll get an LED.

I got 130v rough service bulbs to provide a bit of overhead. I hate when bulbs blow. Wired them in series as recommended.

Checked starting voltage: 154.8v

Hooked it up, fired it up. Very gratifying: they lit right up.

I saw a couple of VERY involved setups that incorporated built-in meters and automatic shutoff. I suppose if I concentrated very hard I could figure out how to do that, but what the heck, it's Sunday.

So I set a timer for 10 minutes and fired up Halo. Every ten minutes I hit PAUSE and check the voltage.

Finally, at 70 minutes I got down to 143.8v DC on the terminals.

I am pausing here while I try to figure things out. I have seen mention of minimum cell voltage of .78v, beyond which you risk reversing the polarity of cells. In my pack would mean a total voltage of 93.6 - not having disassembled the pack, I have no way of knowing whether any cell has gone below this threshold, of course, so I'm giving myself plenty of wiggle room before I do something irretrievable.

UPDATE AGAIN: it's another hour since I wrote the above and the voltage climbed back to 145. I put the discharger on it for another 10 minutes and pulled it back to 143.5. I'll see what it's relaxed back to in the morning.
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