diy solar

diy solar

Is battery equalizer required for batteries in series?

4 at $1200.
For $300 more, you could have an 48v EG4.
And, no headaches.
 
not so cheap... 297*2 = ~ $600

only $19 difference compared to ZOOMS 12V 200AH :/
Unfortunately I had to have low temp protection in my situation (it has already saved my bacon once) These batteries just barely fit in the only space I have to put them and I needed to have them in 48v series configuration. I needed the batteries in a short time. I was really glad I was able to get these and that they actually worked.
 
Is it capable of balancing a huge voltage difference(like .7V -1V), or do you need to balance the batteries roughly before using it?
Unfortunately voltage is not a good indicator of state of charge for a lifepo4 battery. The balancer is supposed to transfer up to 10 amps per hour between batteries ( I have no Idea how they calculate that) I charged my batteries as high as they would go and then put a small dummy load on the persistently high voltage battery to even it up with the others and then connected the balancer ad hoped for the best.
 
I'm convinced that putting 12 volt LiFePO4 batteries with a BMS in series is doomed to fail. Yes, a balancer will usually keep the batteries closer to the same voltage. But if a single battery of the desired voltage had been created from the start, a third party balancer wouldn't be necessary.
 
I'm convinced that putting 12 volt LiFePO4 batteries with a BMS in series is doomed to fail. Yes, a balancer will usually keep the batteries closer to the same voltage. But if a single battery of the desired voltage had been created from the start, a third party balancer wouldn't be necessary.
The balancer is just a bandaid, to be placed on the boo-boo of having the wrong battery. lol
 
I have a HA02 balancer on each of my 4 x 12V SLA battery banks and they do a good job but can't say how well it would perform with LiFePO4.

Except at low and high SOC levels, LiFePO4 has a very flat voltage-SOC relationship meaning balancing based on voltage alone may not be sufficient - but at least it should help reduce the scale of the imbalance - 13.3V vs 13.9V is quite a big difference in LiFePO4 land.
 
So now I have 4, off the shelf, 12V LiFePO4 200Ah batteries and a 24V All-In-One.

Is it advisable to use the bandaid and plan on disconnecting a few times a year for balancing?
 
So now I have 4, off the shelf, 12V LiFePO4 200Ah batteries and a 24V All-In-One.

Is it advisable to use the bandaid and plan on disconnecting a few times a year for balancing?
If the batteries are good and if you properly balance them using a 12V charger before you ever put them into your system (in 2S2P in your case) then you shouldn't need the bandaid and you probably will only need to rebalance at most once a year. I have two batteries in series. They have been so for almost 10 months now I think. They are still at the exact same voltage.
 
So now I have 4, off the shelf, 12V LiFePO4 200Ah batteries and a 24V All-In-One.

Is it advisable to use the bandaid and plan on disconnecting a few times a year for balancing?
The balancer is a permanent solution, not a temporary patch. The balancer can also take the place of the initial top balance.
 
So now I have 4, off the shelf, 12V LiFePO4 200Ah batteries and a 24V All-In-One.

Is it advisable to use the bandaid and plan on disconnecting a few times a year for balancing?
2 in series is not as complicated as 4 in series.
 
So now I have 4, off the shelf, 12V LiFePO4 200Ah batteries and a 24V All-In-One.

Is it advisable to use the bandaid and plan on disconnecting a few times a year for balancing?
Do the initial balance, and use the balancer to keep everything happy. Check voltages a couple times a year. Shouldn't have to do anything else.
 
Continued use of battery with misbalanced cells will degrade some cells faster than others in the array. This compounds matching deviation over time.

If you continue to applied 14.2v for a few days it will come into balance. Even when BMS opens for cell overvoltage it continues to bleed high cell and eventually resets BMS and begins charging again. This over-voltage shutdown may happen multiple times before cells get balanced enough to top off all cells.

A 1% to 2% difference in cell state of charge is enough to cause BMS overvoltage shut downs. The BMS likely has 100 mA bleed resistor. For a 100 AH battery that requires 10 to 20 hours of bleeding to bring the cells into balance again. This time does not include BMS overvoltage shutdown recovery time added in.

Cell self discharge rate is 1% to 4% per month depending on temp and there is variance between cells especially when they are at differing state of charge. So no balancing for few months and you potentially create the overvoltage shutdown problem. Also, high discharge rate on battery increases rate of imbalance between cells.
I am presently seeing if I can get my batteries closer to internally balanced without disassembly of the bank. I have 4 of the global power batteries in series connected with an active balancer. I have reached cutoff voltage. The batteries specs are 14.6 volts for cutoff but each battery is cutting of at about 14 volts. I have my charger set at 5 amps the voltage on the batteries reads even at 13.6 gradually increasing to about 14.2 volts and rapidly falling to 13.6 and repeating. The charger shows less than 1amp output to the batteries. The voltage on the batteries individually is virtually identical. I expected to see a spike on the disconnecting battery but I’m not getting that. Perhaps because of the active balancer?
 
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