Battery Charge Readings ?

[s/v Jedi]

Nonsense. Voltage of a battery under load says less about the battery SOC than my dead granny.

[FlyingCloud1937]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

Nonsense. Voltage of a battery under load says less about the battery SOC than my dead granny.

Well any 440 amp bank that can't sustain a 2.5 amp load without dropping to 12.3v and then bouncing back to 12.68 demonstrates a highly sulphated ie high internal resistance. The 20 hr rate for this bank is 23 amps, what does the voltage do under this load...my bet is it drops to a load voltage below 11v.

This will cause problems though-out the system for any motor loads, not to mention causing higher amp loads for the design wattage.

I didn't say anything about SOC except you can't measure SPG unless you have a resting voltage

LLoyd

[s/v Jedi]

Sulphated, yes, possibly. But I bet it is just a lazy battery. Give it a good cycle and lets see how it is after that!

[FlyingCloud1937]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

Sulphated, yes, possibly. But I bet it is just a lazy battery. Give it a good cycle and lets see how it is after that!

well considering that Don's problems started with this bank just about 2 years ago, just after installing new.

I stand behind my original diagnosis...The bank was never commissioned properly, and either a design fault in the charging system, or operator error has rendered this bank murdered.

Is a lazy battery even a real diagnosis?

Lloyd

[FlyingCloud1937]

Originally Posted by FlyingCloud1937

Don,

As Twisted and Main, have said all that can be said, I have 2 thoughts to add.

Since you can't get to shore power, or chose not to, for any length of time. I suspect you will never be able to properly EQ the bats with your set up. If it was me I would take the worst pair to shore and have someone whom is set up to temp compensate/EQ. And if they can't be brought into spec then it's time to replace your bats again. Which I belive will be the case.

After 1 year of chronic under charging, and leaving the bats in a partial state of charge, has most likely sulfated the bats so that they may never again be able to provide service.

Next, you need to get shrink tube on all of your cable connections, else you will be replacing all the cables in short order. Especially the cables inside the bat boxes.

Here is a link for you: Failure Modes of FLA's, and VRLA's

Lloyd

O gee, I see I already posted to this old topic.

Lloyd

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by FlyingCloud1937

I stand behind my original diagnosis...The bank was never commissioned properly, and either a design fault in the charging system, or operator error has rendered this bank murdered.

Is a lazy battery even a real diagnosis?

Lloyd

I don't know what a lazy battery is either. But I ran the refrig for 24 hours to put a load on the batteries and they seem fine now and the voltages seen to be the same as when they were brand new.

Now there is a 290W solar panel charging them and I hope they are now happy acid heads!

[dandrews]

Originally Posted by Don L

I don't know what a lazy battery is either. But I ran the refrig for 24 hours to put a load on the batteries and they seem fine now and the voltages seen to be the same as when they were brand new.

Now there is a 290W solar panel charging them and I hope they are now happy acid heads!

Congrats on that new solar panel.

Don

[Zil]

A Lead Acid battery must have a load applied first to break the surface charge before voltage can be used to assess the condition. SPG, temperature corrected, is the only accurate determination of SoC.