diy solar

diy solar

Flooded Lead Acid Revitalization.

Not necessarily. Open circuit voltage isn't a good indicator of battery health. It may show 12+ volts, but the real test is if it can maintain that under a load.
Thanks. That's true. It is supplying power to my system
 
Thanks for the beautiful advice. The battery has charged up to 13.5 volts. The 20-amp automatic charger was awesome.

Now disconnect, let battery settle about 12 hours. Check voltage.
Look up technical specs for your battery or a similar one. Resting voltage vs. SoC varies with chemistry and temperature.
You would like voltage to show near 100% SoC. If low, it is possible a cell is still low and equalization is required.
 

Thats the company that makes the chargers I have. As mentioned in another post desulfinators normally dont really work that well from my experience but the ones I have from pulsetech do from my experience.

The easiest way to tell is by looking into the cells for floating material after using them as it gets pretty nasty on batteries that are bad off.

Pulsetech is what the military uses a good bit to maintain their vehicle batteries. They are not cheap but I have had great results personally with the chargers.

That said I have not had 100% rate of success reviving a battery. I had one battery that was left in a ford excursion of mine that would show full charge and volts until you opened the door. Instant 6 volts or less with any draw at all on it. So it had volts but no amps. I tried several chargers on it with no changes.

I put a pulsetech on it. It killed it. DEAD.

But if you looked down in the cells afterwords it looked like icebergs floating in the acid. I wish I had cycled the acid out to see if it could of been saved but I never got around to it. I think I still have that battery at my old house. I may try again doing that one day. The point is it worked as far as desulfating the battery but it was so far gone it killed it off completely when it broke it loose from the plates charging it.

They are great for maintenance too. I use one on a f250 super duty truck that has a dual battery setup in it with 99% pure lead plate batteries in it. They are over 12 years old now and still have full capacity as far as I can tell. Still cranks the diesel engine up fast on the coldest days. So Im kind of hooked on the chargers myself. But to each their own.
That's interesting. What is the specifications of the pulse tech charger
 
Now disconnect, let battery settle about 12 hours. Check voltage.
Look up technical specs for your battery or a similar one. Resting voltage vs. SoC varies with chemistry and temperature.
You would like voltage to show near 100% SoC. If low, it is possible a cell is still low and equalization is required.
Thanks for the beautiful advice. The battery has charged up to 13.5 volts. The 20-amp automatic charger was awesome.
 
Yep. We killed $1000 in AGMs in just a few years doing just that, because we didn’t know any better at the time. And by “killed” they never really could get us through a whole 24 hours, because they were always undercharged. Our solar charging was just not adequate nor was our shore charger. Didn’t know the high current charging needs of AGM, but do now. Wish we had jumped on lifepo4 from the get go, but then we would’ve missed out on the lesson lol.



What digital tester might this be?
Thank you.
 
That's interesting. What is the specifications of the pulse tech charger
They have all the specs on the site I linked. The one I use isnt made anymore but the replacement for it is :


They have chargers in about any size you could want. I needed one as a maintenance charger not a rapid charger so thats why I purchase the ones I use. I have their 4 way cycling unit to allow one charger to charge 4 vehicles by cycling each one every 20 minutes.
 
I never understood why anyone would want to try to rely on weak or dead batteries. If they won't or don't charge fully and hold a charge they need to be replaced. Period.

A lead-acid battery does not well tolerate complete discharge - that means anything under about 11.8 volts and even if they will fully charge they'll never be the same and they'll never last their intended lifespan.

And why oem batteries in cars and motorsports vehicles don't generally last very long if they've sat on a showroom floor and allowed to discharge. They have to be kept fully charged.
There are ways to remove sulfation from the plates, at least for flooded.

I've done the power supply at equalization voltages and found it does work but takes a long time. I've taken Trojans left for dead back to over 90% capacity that had been sitting for 2 years and had less than 2.0V when I started.

I've experimented with the DC welder method and it is now the go to. My wife's car has a revitalized battery in it right now, I never told her it was one brought back to life. I 100% trust that battery, I load tested it before and after. It didn't pass before after charging but it passes quite well now. I've been using this method on starting batteries, did try on a pair of Trojans I could not get above 80%, but didn't help those. I had ran several EQ and discharge cycles on the Trojans before trying it.

The method is not for the faint of heart and safety is paramount. I do these outside preferably with a good wind due to the large amount of out gassing. I'm using about 25 feet of welding cable to keep it at a distance.

I probably shouldn't even mention it as someone here might try it and blow one up while not observing extreme safety precautions. But it will work on some but not all flooded lead acid.

I think it's great that many think you can't remove that sulfation, keeps my battery costs down.
 
Yep. We killed $1000 in AGMs in just a few years doing just that, because we didn’t know any better at the time. And by “killed” they never really could get us through a whole 24 hours, because they were always undercharged. Our solar charging was just not adequate nor was our shore charger. Didn’t know the high current charging needs of AGM, but do now. Wish we had jumped on lifepo4 from the get go, but then we would’ve missed out on the lesson lol.

It wasn't lack of high current that killed those lead acid batteries, it was the absorption charge needed to get to full charge. Absorption takes time. The battery internal resistance increases as the battery is charged close to full. The resistance slows down the charge rate.

The problem with solar is the sun goes down, the charging stops. Absorption charge never completes and loads are placed on the battery. The battery is held in a constant state of less than full charge, the resulting sulfation on the plates continues to build reducing the battery capacity.

For anyone who wants to use lead acid type batteries on a solar system, I suggest splitting the bank into 2 parts. Use a EQ capable battery charger on one half powered off the other half when solar input is available. This would require using an AC charger off the inverter. Ensure that half of the bank goes thru absorption charge before placing any loads on it. Perform an equalization charge about once per month if the battery manufacturer recommends EQ.

Then it is a matter of switching banks and using the charger to ensure the other half gets to full charge.
 
Absorption charge never completes and loads are placed on the battery. The battery is held in a constant state of less than full charge, the resulting sulfation on the plates continues to build reducing the battery capacity.
Thank you. I now have a decent charger, a Victron IP22 12v/30A, which is programmable. I’ve tried the “recondition” mode once so far, but it hasn’t seemed to help much. If I get a 10A load on the battery (300W inverter running 100W ac loads), after about 30 minutes, battery voltage will drop to 10v or so and the low voltage alarm on the inverter trips. This is a Renogy 100Ah AGM battery that was in our solar system in our camp trailer and probably didn’t get a good absorbing charge. Now we did have what I thought was a decent AC charger for it, a NOCO Gen2, which is a 2-bank 20A automatic lead acid charger. I don’t know what its charge profile was and didn’t have a good way to measure what it was doing when.

So that said, do you think I could force a long absorption charge onto this battery with the Victron ip22? Maybe set it to power supply mode and check it after a couple of hours? I would love to be able to get a little more life out of this battery if possible. We have two more just like it, too.
 
Thank you. I now have a decent charger, a Victron IP22 12v/30A, which is programmable. I’ve tried the “recondition” mode once so far, but it hasn’t seemed to help much. If I get a 10A load on the battery (300W inverter running 100W ac loads), after about 30 minutes, battery voltage will drop to 10v or so and the low voltage alarm on the inverter trips. This is a Renogy 100Ah AGM battery that was in our solar system in our camp trailer and probably didn’t get a good absorbing charge. Now we did have what I thought was a decent AC charger for it, a NOCO Gen2, which is a 2-bank 20A automatic lead acid charger. I don’t know what its charge profile was and didn’t have a good way to measure what it was doing when.

I have a NOCO, hate it. I know there are those that swear by it, I usually swear at it.

So that said, do you think I could force a long absorption charge onto this battery with the Victron ip22? Maybe set it to power supply mode and check it after a couple of hours? I would love to be able to get a little more life out of this battery if possible. We have two more just like it, too.
With AGM, it is a little tougher to bring one back due to the cells are usually sealed and the AGM battery relies on the electrolyte reconstituting inside the battery during the charging process. If it was a flooded lead acid battery like a Trojan, then it is simply a matter of using equalization charging voltage and boil away on the electrolyte, adding distilled water as needed. The Trojans I mentioned above used 6 gallons of distilled water to get 4 back to just over 90% capacity and the remaining 2 to barely 80%.

So you can see the problem with AGM. Very few AGM manufacturers recommend equalization and that is because the electrolyte will boil away and not be reconstituted, thus leading to plate failure.

Yes, charge using the battery manufacturer absorption voltage. The Victron IP22 is a good charger and programmable. A good absorption charge may help bring some capacity back if sulfation is not crystallized and is instead the soft sulfation normally found in normal discharge. You don't know unless you try. Do not charge AGM at a high rate, for a 100Ah the max charge rate would be 25% of Ah rating, 25A. Once the battery charger hits constant voltage, it is entering absoprtion. It might take an hour or two, severely sulfated a little longer. You should monitor battery temp, if it rises above 105F, I'd let the battery rest and resume after a period of cooldown. If you aren't done within 4 hours, discharge to 50% SOC,then repeat the process. Cycling a battery can loosen hard sulfation from the plates and restore some capacity.
 
Was it charged regularly in the remote area?
What was the battery voltage before you hooked it to the charger?
What was the battery voltage after being on charger for 48 hours?
Do all 6 cells have enough electrolyte to ensure the lead plates are fully submerged? If yes, do not add any additional distilled water.
Have you checked the specific gravity of the 6 cells with a hydrometer using a take-in, expel, take-in, expel, take-in, expel, take-in, record value method?
Goodday one of my FLAs {12v 220ah} tubular batteries trips the fuse on my battery charger, when tring to charge it up for equalization. what could be the cause?
 
Goodday one of my FLAs {12v 220ah} tubular batteries trips the fuse on my battery charger, when tring to charge it up for equalization. what could be the cause?
Was it charged fully thru absorption first before attempting and EQ?

If it was and continues to trip the battery charger fuse, then the battery most likely has an internal short.
 
Was it charged fully thru absorption first before attempting and EQ?

If it was and continues to trip the battery charger fuse, then the battery most likely has an internal short.
what then is the remedy if internal short is responsible? it is the process of charging fully that trips the fuse.
 
what then is the remedy if internal short is responsible? it is the process of charging fully that trips the fuse.
Trade it in on a new battery.

Did it happen to get frozen at some point? Mobile application?

You could possibly shake the battery if a piece of plate material had dropped down and created the short, it might dislodge and settle to the bottom of the battery. I'd definitely wait until all hydrogen gas had dissipated however a short in a cell can cause other cells to feed electrons to the shorted cell and the plate is still gassing.

Freezing will bend plates, mobile can shake plate material loose. Dropping a battery can bend plates. Or simply sulfation of the plates and the hard sulfation breaking off with high charge rates or EQ can blow sulfated plate material off/stir sediment and create the short. Moving a battery can stir up sulfated sediment in the bottom and it lodges between plates creating a short.

If it were me, I'd junk it. While I might take some risks when it comes to recovering lead acid, I don't like internal shorts due to the high risk of possible ignition due to the conditions I described above. If there are large pieces of plate floating around, it means the battery plates are probably depleted or the battery was severely sulfated. Not much life left in either case.
 
Back
Top