State of Charge

[FlyingScot]

I suspect if this were my battery bank, I would pull one battery from the bank at a time and do a full restoration charge/discharge/charge per the Firefly manual on each and then put back together.

It sounds like you are trying to do this while actively using the house bank.

Chris

[admiralslater]

There is a lack of access to shore based smart chargers in the Grenadines.

[john61ct]

Originally Posted by FlyingScot

I would pull one battery from the bank at a time and do a full restoration charge/discharge/charge per the Firefly manual on each and then put back together.

Good point.

Like any conditioning / equalizing routine, one unit at a time, and of course isolated from production use. A good case for parallel redundancy.

If in primitive / remote waters, ideally you'd strive to be able to do so independent of shore power.

Of course sometimes difficult, maybe impossible, or more trouble than bank longevity is worth.

[admiralslater]

I had thought about doing one battery at a time , but could not at the moment, on the positive side the performance of the bank has improved substantially..
I was using the bank at the same time as the recharge . Using my friends gen set and solar We put in 60 amps for an hour or so and then the sun came up so we kept a good rate going . Intermittently i shut down thesolar and turned off the loads and read the output on the bc .
Just looked at the VictronConnect and saw thati had a voltage peak at 16.8 . I checked all my settings and they are correct. Any ideas

[john61ct]

You def took a cycles longevity hit off the back end, but who knows how much?

Do a proper round of recovery cycles soon as opportunity presents.

You may well be OK wrt reliability, maybe for years, if so shows how amazing FF are.

For remote cruising like that I personally would have a fresh reserve on hand myself just in case.

[admiralslater]

Any thouhts on how to induce a twelve volt load on a loose battery

[FlyingScot]

Originally Posted by admiralslater

I had thought about doing one battery at a time , but could not at the moment, on the positive side the performance of the bank has improved substantially..
I was using the bank at the same time as the recharge . Using my friends gen set and solar We put in 60 amps for an hour or so and then the sun came up so we kept a good rate going . Intermittently i shut down thesolar and turned off the loads and read the output on the bc .
Just looked at the VictronConnect and saw thati had a voltage peak at 16.8 . I checked all my settings and they are correct. Any ideas

I find that I have to have my Victron MPPT's turned down about 0.15v below the set point I want to achieve. I suspect that if I only had one MPPT and no other charge sources the top voltage would not overshoot as far or none at all. This is just a guess at this point.

[john61ct]

Originally Posted by admiralslater

Any thouhts on how to induce a twelve volt load on a loose battery

Sorry not sure I understand the question.

Any device that pulls a decent load can be attached to an isolated battery just as easily as to a bank.

There are specialized resistance devices for keeping the load at a constant current for testing purposes, but that is not needed here.

Anything between 10-20A per 100Ah capacity should be fine, just make 100% sure you are ready to start recharging immediately soon as you hit your LVD target - 10.5V on a 6S unit?

And of course ensure you don't go any lower than that from now on 8-)

[admiralslater]

Originally Posted by john61ct

Sorry not sure I understand the question.

Any device that pulls a decent load can be attached to an isolated battery just as easily as to a bank.

There are specialized resistance devices for keeping the load at a constant current for testing purposes, but that is not needed here.

Anything between 10-20A per 100Ah capacity should be fine, just make 100% sure you are ready to start recharging immediately soon as you hit your LVD target - 10.5V on a 6S unit?

And of course ensure you don't go any lower than that from now on 8-)

I understand I just am trying to think of things that i have on board that I can use to draw down the load that dont cut out under a certain voltage

[john61ct]

Actually inverters often have a very low cutout, and shore devices often are high current.

Even if cutoff is 11.5 say, gets you most of the way there.

Light bulbs are good, especially non-LED heat producing ones like halogen.

Laptop running graphics benchmark?

Anything that gets hot

[admiralslater]

Well here we are some progress has been made .
As always there is a new wrinkle . My panels are going into float and dont want to jump back to bulk eventhoug there are 3 refrigeration loads on them . The result is that I am sitting here on a bright daywith a draw on the neg. side of zero .
Because my set up is , pannel - mppt - breaker- Batteries when I switch off the breakers it does no affect the con trollers . Any ideas

[john61ct]

fuse at the battery side right?

Adjust the controller so voltage stays at Absorb longer and returns to it from Float quicker.

What are its settings now?

Should only be dropping to Float after endAmps is reached, but it won't know, you need to keep calibrating AHT against the ammeter until you verify that.

[admiralslater]

John first off thanks for all your help .
I went to the victron web site and there is a switch when you use your Smartphone or tablet . I just trned it off and on and it reset . Bruce Shwab suggested that .
My absorption is set for ten hours. Today I ran the engines and switched things off and on all day . Perhaps confusion followed

[john61ct]

The Victrons don't go by actual time spent **at** Absorb V, all the time after CV is hit counts.

They also do not let you actually set AHT directly, that is just a "safety max time", their obscured algorithms base off starting voltage in the morning.

I suggest for testing purposes, just set Float to your desired Absorb V as long as you are manually observing, and see if you **ever** get the bank all the way to the endAmps-verified Full point.

[john61ct]

But anything Bruce or MaineSail says, overrides me 8-)