Charging Issues: Do I have a conflict between solar charger and alternator?

[Kerry1]

I have 4 6V deep cycle LA Batteries in series/parallel as House (430AH) and 1 12V LA Starter. Charging is via 3 sources. The boat lies on a swing mooring and a 80 Watt solar panel keeps the house battery topped up charging through a Victron 100/15 Amp MMPT controller. I have roughly 80 Amp P type Alternator charging through what will soon be a Balmar MC-618 smart Alternator Regulator to the House bats, and the other alternator (Volvo D2-55 runs two alternators) is a standard issue for the Starter battery.

House battery may also priority charged through a Victron MultiPlus C 12/1600/70-16 230V AC also when on shore power or connected to a Honda 2000 Inverter Generator.

My issue is that the house batteries are failing, partly due to aging but also the solar panel frequently seems to have had the cells boiling, or at least gassing quite a lot. I also recently burnt out my cheaper ext alternator regulator because I believe it was working too hard to get the batteries fully charged.

Another reason may be that there has been conflict with the charging devices, the Solar panels and the alternator. What I want to do is avoid conflict when both solar and alternator are charging batteries. I've just ordered the Balmar MC-618 smart Alternator Regulator and I think the existing wiring harness will suffice for the new regulator, because it's had a smart Next Step External regulator with temp. sensors and other cabling that is necessary for a smart regulator,

Can someone give me clues as to how to avoid the solar from boiling the cells and perhaps being in conflict with the Alternator charging system? I'm talking here of programming the charging parameters, which I'm able to do through bluetooth. As it stands I've simply installed these components with the default settings for LA batteries.

I just remembered another issue. Both Positive and Negative leads come off the same pair of paralleled 6v batts as shown in image, rather than opposite ends of the battery bank. Would this be the reason those pair seem to work hardest using more water? (Causing imbalance due to internal resistance)

Should I change the position of the main negative distribution lead to the terminal circled in yellow for better balanced loads across the bank?

I'll delay buying new batteries at this point, for one reason I want to migrate to a LifePo house system, which all of the devices are capable of being programmed for. Expense is another!

Thanks for your interest, hope to hear from you soon.

[Madehn]

Your wiring is poor. The near pair of 6 volt batteries will work approx 35 to 40 harder than the far pair with your wiring set up this way. So yes you should change that. Second if you are boiling cells then odds are that you have a bad cell somewhere that is pulling the whole bank down which allows the charger to then send too many amps to the bank. This boils the good cells and the bad one will never get good. Before long in that scenario the whole bank is toast. ( ask me how I know I fried an expensive set of 4 8 D AGMs that way). Get yourself an inexpensive clamp on ammeter so that you can easily tell what exactly is being sent to your batteries under various conditions Remember the batteries control how much charge they accept not the other way round. Look up your voltage and charging times from battery makers website and go with those parameters. Be sure your charging sources are reading voltage directly from batteries if that is an option and thru thick enough wire that there is minimal loss. Good luck.

[Madehn]

One other piece. I am just finishing up my install on a new bank of 8 Rolls high cap 6 volt batteries and three new start batts. Solar alternator wind and two Benny driven inverter / chargers. A good crimper is your friend although hammer crumpet is an inexpensive alternative for a few connections. Use tinned lugs of the proper size and coat every connection with dielectric grease and adhesive heat shrink tube. I used tinned wire for everything although when I took apart the cables that I did ten years ago using copper welding wire, I found no evidence of corrosion. Again good luck.

[Kerry1]

Thanks for your suggestions, points taken.