Battery Replacement

[dunedin]

Thanks for all of your responses and helpful advice. I was particularly interested in testing the starter battery as I can live with the possibility of the house batteries dying while I'm at anchor but the thought of not being able to start the engine due to starter battery dying is more of a concern (and could be safety issue).

So how much does a new starter battery cost? Not a lot, and with 12 year life probably works out at around £10 per annum.

If you think it could be a safety issue why not simply replace? Most other safety gear has date based replacement, and an engine start battery is very cheap in the wider scheme of things.

And how long do you expect to keep the boat? No point in delaying and giving all the benefit to the next owner?

 

[wonkywinch]

And how long do you expect to keep the boat? No point in delaying and giving all the benefit to the next owner?

A good point and one that helped me commit to a shedload of expense over the next couple of months. New sails, standing/running rigging, coppercoat and a hull polish.

 

[Baggywrinkle]

If they are worrying you, and you have the cash available, then just replace them.

Nothing better than relaxing in a quiet anchorage on a boat where everything just works.

 

[cpedw]

I sought advice from duckduckgo on what is a battery drop test. The AI view:

"Search Assist


A battery drop test is a method used to assess the condition of a battery by dropping it and observing its bounce. However, this test is not a reliable way to determine if a battery is dead or not, as it mainly indicates whether the battery is fresh or has been used."

 

[Stemar]

I sought advice from duckduckgo on what is a battery drop test. The AI view:

"Search Assist


A battery drop test is a method used to assess the condition of a battery by dropping it and observing its bounce. However, this test is not a reliable way to determine if a battery is dead or not, as it mainly indicates whether the battery is fresh or has been used."

At least that's obviously fiction, and anyone who uses that kind of thing probably should be discouraged from breeding. The danger is when it's less obvious.

 

[Baggywrinkle]

I sought advice from duckduckgo on what is a battery drop test. The AI view:

"Search Assist


A battery drop test is a method used to assess the condition of a battery by dropping it and observing its bounce. However, this test is not a reliable way to determine if a battery is dead or not, as it mainly indicates whether the battery is fresh or has been used."

This is the reason formal methods were created for the specification, development, analysis, and verification of software and hardware systems - simple language is too vague and open to interpretation, even worse if it has to be translated. As a result of formal methods (and software intrinsically having to be machine interpretable), AI is very good at writing software.
It also does pretty well where language is constrained to specific accepted interpretation, like law.

Where it "hallucinates" (produces a response that appears to be accurate or plausible but that contains inaccurate, missing or misleading information.) is when language is used or parsed that has common interpretations other than the one intended, this combined with a lack of context produces some hilarious results. "battery drop test" is a good example, a "drop test" is a common test for all sorts of things, so why not batteries?

So expand the question .... Seeding the AI with a description of the role you expect it to play, and then asking a question will get a much better answer.

Try this as a prompt in googles AI, Gemini .... "You are an electrician specialising in marine installations, can you tell me what a lead acid battery health test is and how I would measure the health and capacity of my lead acid battery?"

This gets a much better response ... try it.