[Ken Streeter]

Originally Posted by Ken Streeter

... the CBA III produces a nice plot, which can be very informative, especially when compared with plots from other batteries and/or the same battery from prior tests. The key metric we use from this test is how many Amp-Hours is sourced from the battery before dropping to 11.0 volts.

... My recollection is that our test methodology gave a capacity of about 12Ah to 14Ah, which is right in line with what we have seen with brand new batteries in past years.

OK, I found the summary plot I made for our team's batteries as of the 2011 build season, which did not include tests of our then-new 2011 batteries. I'll still have to wait until tonight to check to see our 2013 test results, as those results are on a computer which is only at our build location.

This plots shows that "new" batteries were giving a range of about 14Ah to 16Ah with our test methodology (I didn't remember that quite right, apparently).

To understand the plot, we give each battery an identifier (e.g. 2010-A indicating the year of purchase and a letter for the year). The plots are labeled with the battery name and the date of the test.

I would note that as of last season, we were still using 2 of our original 4 batteries from 2005 (our rookie year) as they still held over 12Ah of charge, although we were using these batteries only for practice as they were no longer competition-legal. (I still need to test these batteries to see if they are worth keeping, but I think last season is likely to have finally killed them - 8 years of competition use including many off-season events isn't too bad!)

I'll try to remember to update this thread tonight with a plot of our test results for our 2013 KoP battery.