My father and I both worked in the Central Offices of several different telephone companies back in the 1970s and they were still using huge Nickel Iron batteries as backup power for the telephone systems until they could start their generators. Each cell was about 40" high tall and about a foot think and about 28" wide and delivered 2 volts IIRC. IIRC they connected 24 of them in series to get 48 VDC. I think some of the larger offices also ran two strings in parallel. My father dropped a 12" Cresent wrench one day and it shorted across the battery system buss bars shorting them out. The wrench disappeared with a BANG! We later found the two ends of it.The Edison Battery, a Nickel Iron battery, made with great precision. While they were not energy dense, they were long lasting if cared for. And they were used in electric cars. Interestingly, these batteries were capable of 100% depth of discharge without damage, and some are still functional today.
No, they were installing new equipment and he was crawling along on top of one of the elevated cable raceways and the wrench slipped and fell onto the bus bars below. I wasn't there when it happened but people were still talking about it when I started with the company a few years later. I don't think anyone ever let him live it down.Was that a "hold my beer and watch this" kind of event
I'm sure that was both crazy scary and cool as hell to see. Imagine the arc a Hummer EV battery could generate!
