diy solar

diy solar

I think one of my cells has failed. Can I try to recover it and/or questions on replacing it.

Are you currently charging the battery?
How are you charging the battery?

I don't have any reason for the 75AH setting. If the cells are 105 that setting should be changed but I don't think it will affect anything else.

Your charger should be charging to the correct parameters. The BMS is for safety and to balance.
 
The battery is currently in my house connected to my Victron charger however no current being passed to the battery, according to the charger it's in Storage mode with a voltage of 13.5.

Typically the battery is charged by a Redarc BCDC 1225D in my truck.
 
You say there aren't any problems, do you think I should just keep using the battery as normal and not worry about the reduced capacity that the BMS is reading?
That Ah reading might be correct for the current state of the battery. If the BMS is setting that value based on it's measurements from high-voltage cut-off to low-voltage cut-off, it very well may be that your capacity is reduced from 100Ah to 75Ah. If you're fine with the 75Ah capacity, there shouldn't be anything unsafe about continuing to use the battery.
Do you still think I should disassemble and do a top charge?
If you want to get back the full capacity (or most of it), yes, you should disassemble and do a top balance.
You say there aren't any problems
To be clear, I meant there weren't any problems that I saw with your settings, other than the one I noted. Whether the loss of capacity associated with the imbalance is a 'problem' is sort of up to you.
 
It is a problem and is why I started this post. I recently got starlink and need as much of the 100AH as possible.
 
No, it absolutely does not. The BMS will cut off discharge when one cell is below the low voltage disconnect level. At that time, the other cells may (probably do) still have some charge remaining.

Are you sure that running it dead very slowly over time won't make it of balance?
 
Does the Total battery Capacity setting in the BMS have any impact on how much it will charge? Does it cut off charging when it thinks it's hit that capacity?

I did change the setting to disable balancing only when charging and the BMS is now trying to balance the cell with the higher voltage to match the others.
 
Does the Total battery Capacity setting in the BMS have any impact on how much it will charge? Does it cut off charging when it thinks it's hit that capacity?
No.

I did change the setting to disable balancing only when charging and the BMS is now trying to balance the cell with the higher voltage to match the others.

Good. Let it be and see what happens.
 
Does the Total battery Capacity setting in the BMS have any impact on how much it will charge?
No.
Does it cut off charging when it thinks it's hit that capacity?
No, that would be a function of voltage only. Your charger will charge to a particular pack voltage, and your BMS will allow that charging to occur as long as no individual cell exceeds the maximum cell voltage.
I did change the setting to disable balancing only when charging and the BMS is now trying to balance the cell with the higher voltage to match the others.
Good! You could let the BMS do this instead of disassembling and doing a top balance, but it will likely take a very long time. If you're in no rush, it should get it there eventually as long as the charger keeps the pack voltage high enough for balancing to continue.
 
I don't believe the AH setting has any effect.
Do you have control of the Victron charger?
Try 13.8 since you are at 13.5 now. You should enable balance at 13.6.
 
Are you sure that running it dead very slowly over time won't make it of balance?
I'm not sure exactly what you mean here...
Cause it to be out of balance? Maybe. Probably not helpful in keeping a top balance.
Cause it to be bottom balanced? No, that won't happen. Any more than charging them well above 3.65 volts would cause them to be top-balanced. In either case you end up with damaged (or destroyed) cells, not a balanced pack.
 
It's winter and I'm not using the camper all that often, roughly what do you think a "very long time is"? Days, weeks, months? I probably won't use the camper again for a week or 2 or possibly more.

Do you think I should do a full discharge and charge to see if that capacity number reverts back to what it used to read? If the capacity is down to 75 AH then I think I am back to trying to answer my initial question of replacing 1 cell and/or looking for suggestions on new cells.
 
Do you think I should do a full discharge and charge to see if that capacity number reverts back to what it used to read? If the capacity is down to 75 AH then I think I am back to trying to answer my initial question of replacing 1 cell and/or looking for suggestions on new cells.

Let the pack balance first. The battery cannot fully charge it one cell keeps cutting off charging due to over volt.

Either let it balance or take the pack apart and manually balance.
 
Days, weeks, months?
Hard to say with certainty. But probably days, maybe weeks. It depends on how far out of balance the cells are, and there's not a good way to know.
But let's say it 25Ah out of balance (based on the 75Ah capacity). Your BMS passively balances at 50mA, I think. So each hour it can re-balance 50mAh, or 0.05Ah. To get 25Ah at .05Ah per hour, would take 25/0.05 = 500 hours, or about three weeks.
If the capacity is down to 75 AH then I think I am back to trying to answer my initial question of replacing 1 cell and/or looking for suggestions on new cells.
Do the top balance (or wait the three weeks on the charger for the BMS to do it), then do a capacity test. Having the cells out of balance looks and acts like reduced capacity, but doesn't mean that the cells are necessarily bad. You may get most or all of your original capacity back if you blance the pack.
The 'capacity' that your BMS is reporting is the amount of charge from high-voltage cutoff to low-voltage cut-off, but these two things are likely not occurring on the same cell because the pack is out of balance. So cell 3 (for example) cuts off charging because that cell is at 100% charge, but because of imbalance, cell 1 (again, just an example, I don't know which cell is lowest) is only at 75% of charge... Now you discharge and cell one gets to 0% after 75Ah (while #3 is still at 25% charge, but you can't use it), and that's the current 'capacity' of the pack. Balance it, and you'll get more capacity.
 
OK, I'll let the BMS do it's thing for a while and I'll report back. Thanks for all the responses and info everyone.
 
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