FireFly Battery Operational User Notes

[CarlF]

Those load testers won't tell you much. Best thing to do is a 20 hr test where you discharge the battery at the 20 hr rate to 10.5 volts and see how long it takes. I actually use the 10 hr rate because it's faster and good enough

But those are pretty worrying numbers. I'd disconnect the batteries and measure the voltage of each one both at full charge and after some use. One of them may be bad.

[bcboomer]

Miss named that. It applies a specific load and it is supposed to maintain a constant load so I can do the 20 hour test.
The batteries all come up to 13.5 volts but I think there is internal resistance that is shutting down the alternator.
The capacity at this point is pretty small

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by bcboomer

I'm going to try an "refresh" my 4 G31s in a week or two. They won't take more than 119 amps from 10.5 volts and drop to 60 amps after a couple of minutes.
I bought a cheap DC load tester and I'll check the capacity.

Please post the how you went about it and the results after. from my reading it appears to acturally "recover" from a capacity loss you need to run the recover procedure twice in a row. Which would basically be 3, recharge -> discharge/test, recharge -> discharge/test, recharge -> life is good hopefully

[admiralslater]

Our Outremer 45 has 5 FF batteries with an energy budget of about 200 amps per day.
We have 960 watts of solar through 3 Victron 100/30 controllers. The engines where just fitted with 120 amp alternators with a serpentine belt system (love it ) Contolled by Ars5s
We have a link 10 monitor.
We have a Stirling 60 amp charger and two inverters 110 for the house etc and 230 for the washing machine .
Over night we use 15-20% of capacity and generally we are back to 100% by 2.00pm.
We added the alts last year to deal with the overcast days of which there where a lot .
Mainsail has a great downloadable form for programming the Balmar regulators.
I love the batteries and I bought them because of the ability to accept abuse .
I should say that this is my second set , I destroyed the first with an unknown load keeping the voltage at 5 for 7 months .

[svchinamoon]

Interesting. Following.

[Nicholson58]

A word of caution. We have 6x4 = 24 volts & 450 AH FF system. My alternator burned out on our first long motor-sail transit. The FF batteries caused the alternator to labor at continuous full load. Many alternators are not rated for this. I had to replace the alternator in the Caribbean with the only 24 volt unit available. It is much smaller and also not full load continuous rated so I load limited with my Balmar 624.

[jkleins]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

We all know there is a learning curve to really know how to best operate different batteries. So since I haven't found a lot of user experience for the FireFly batteries it seemed worth it to start a thread to see what can be collected.



What I hope is to NOT have is a bunch of debate about different batteries. For the point of this thread it doesn't matter how happy or mad you are about your FLA/AGMs/GELs/LFPs. Prove me wrong and not post that stuff unless it is about your experience with FireFly batteries.



For users who don't know, there is a manual. From this you can get:



- Peukert's Constant - 1.07

- absorption voltage 14.4V (12V system of course)

- hold charge till 0.5A for the G31 for "full" charge, 2A for the L16

- "float" 13.4-13.5



Other items:

- fast charge - who is doing what, how, and how often are you doing it

- charge efficiency - what are you setting your battery monitor to

- what depth of discharge are you allowing and how are you basing it

- how frequently are you getting the battery fully charged at 14.4V and 0.5A each?

- is it really worth discharging down to 20% and doing a full charge and then repeating again as far as maintaining battery capacity that you have been able to determine



anything users feel are worth posting about lets collect it

Fast charge. When they are low we have two 110 amp chargers that can put out about 180 amps in bulk. Our alternator is also 200 amp and settles around 180 amps when low. Our bank is 770 AH and we can go 3 days on a charge. We do charge anytime we run the generator for watermaking, etc just to keep the gen loaded. We have two chargers so we set one on auto and the other on constant current 14.4 and manually control that one with the output current control to keep the gen loaded as best we can.

I use the Balmar settings from Bruce as well

I usually will not let it get below 20 but realistically I end up charging around 30-40 just so I don’t wake up too low in the morning since I do run the coffee maker off the inverter and with a big load the voltage can get down to 11.2- 11.4 if you try that with 20%. I get nervous but it always bounces back as soon as you turn the load off.

I hardly ever get to full charge when out. Of course now at the dock they just sit on Float.

I am 4+ years now and have not noticed any decrease but I can’t imagine there hasn’t been some. Before I take off next time I am going to do the recharge protocol to try to get them as best they can be.

I have no doubt that I could baby these and get more years out of them but the reason I bought them was so I didn’t have to think about it and so far that has been working.

[jack630]

We had a similar experience as Nicholson58. We have 6 FF's for the house and I purchased a 200 Amp alternator with the batteries thinking that I could charge them up in a couple of hours and a that a 200 A alternator would be stout enough to handle it with some lattitude. I initially de-rated the charger with the Belt Manager program to about 3 but the alternator burned up in a couple of weeks of installing it. Fortunately, the manufacturer repaired it under warranty. I now run the alternator de-rated to 7 using the Belt Manager program and it takes about 4 hours of running to get them charged. I also run the engine room blower all the time the motor is on, to try to keep the alternator temperature down. By purchasing an expensive 200A alternator, I was hoping to get about 150A output but I'm only getting about 75A with my current setup. Very disappointing.

[daletournier]

Originally Posted by Nicholson58

A word of caution. We have 6x4 = 24 volts & 450 AH FF system. My alternator burned out on our first long motor-sail transit. The FF batteries caused the alternator to labor at continuous full load. Many alternators are not rated for this. I had to replace the alternator in the Caribbean with the only 24 volt unit available. It is much smaller and also not full load continuous rated so I load limited with my Balmar 624.

Do you have a smart reg that monitors alternator temperature?

[sailorboy1]

From the posts i added an alternator temperature monitor to my shopping cart!

[daletournier]

In regards to FF's handling abuse, how well do they tolerate screw ups, like regs failing and pumping in 15V?

[sogin]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

From the posts i added an alternator temperature monitor to my shopping cart!

We have 5 FF grow 31 batteries and use a Balmar 614 with monitoring of both the starter and house battery banks as well as the alternator. Through experimentation we have settled on a belt manger setting of 4 to prevent overheating of a 150 amp hour alternator fitted with a serpentile belt system. Even in a 90 F temp environment we protected the alternator from overheating at 50% SOC of the batteries. Over the last three years have not pushed beyond 50% SOC but overall I'm very satisfied with the FF performance.

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by sogin

We have 5 FF grow 31 batteries and use a Balmar 614 with monitoring of both the starter and house battery banks as well as the alternator. Through experimentation we have settled on a belt manger setting of 4 to prevent overheating of a 150 amp hour alternator fitted with a serpentile belt system. Even in a 90 F temp environment we protected the alternator from overheating at 50% SOC of the batteries. Over the last three years have not pushed beyond 50% SOC but overall I'm very satisfied with the FF performance.

Are you saying that your alternator was getting too hot if it supplied more than 60amps (40%)?

[sogin]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

Are you saying that your alternator was getting too hot if it supplied more than 60amps (40%)?

The use of the belt manager at 4 was empirically determined by checking to see if the alternator generated an error on the 614 regulator indicating over heating. But we set the over temp heat criteria relatively low to protect the alternator. When the batteries are low the alternator puts out more than 60 amp hours under these setting. I don't think the belt manager setting at 4 directly correlates with a limit on amp hour output setting.

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by sogin

I don't think the belt manager setting at 4 directly correlates with a limit on amp hour output setting.

I believe it says that for my ARS-5. A 4 setting would be 40% of the field current, which determines the output capacity.