Lead acid bank Terminals touched, 0v out but all cells are fine, help?

[Ale170]

Removing terminals from an inverter my positive and negative terminals touched due to the floppiness and proximity of the positive and negative, lasted about 3-5 seconds. Sadly my big wires would no longer power the inverter so I investigated.
-— the + and - touched, big spark. Battery won’t work.


long story short, all cells are fine but i Now have a faulty bus bar. Considering the bar is made of copper wire filaments wrapped in rubber I am confused to say the least.
—- it’s the big wire connecting 2 of the cells!


The individual 2 cells of the bus bar connection are fine 2v each, try them together expecting 4v I get 0v. The chain of batteries before and after the faulty bus bar are fine too.
— everything works it’s just one bus bar

any thoughts on the situation would be be Helpful, i literally just bought an iconica 3000w mppt which lead me to this issue. Reading the customer service email regarding the internal ground screw and it’s advise to completely remove the terminals before doing this i instead of simply pulling the plug to the battery decided to remove the whole system. My mistake in all its gory detail.
—I listened to the exact wording of an email :|

 

[v_green57]

Removing terminals from an inverter my positive and negative terminals touched due to the floppiness and proximity of the positive and negative, lasted about 3-5 seconds. Sadly my big wires would no longer power the inverter so I investigated.
-— the + and - touched, big spark. Battery won’t work.


long story short, all cells are fine but i Now have a faulty bus bar. Considering the bar is made of copper wire filaments wrapped in rubber I am confused to say the least.
—- it’s the big wire connecting 2 of the cells!


The individual 2 cells of the bus bar connection are fine 2v each, try them together expecting 4v I get 0v. The chain of batteries before and after the faulty bus bar are fine too.
— everything works it’s just one bus bar

any thoughts on the situation would be be Helpful, i literally just bought an iconica 3000w mppt which lead me to this issue. Reading the customer service email regarding the internal ground screw and it’s advise to completely remove the terminals before doing this i instead of simply pulling the plug to the battery decided to remove the whole system. My mistake in all its gory detail.
—I listened to the exact wording of an email :|

When you say "all cells are fine", have you individually load tested each cell? You can have voltage at the terminals but not be able to pull current. This happened to me with an L-16. Negative post had parted company with the internals. It I tapped it with a hammer, it would reconnect, but if you pulled 5A or greater it would open up again but with no load would read the expected +/- 6VDC.

Just making sure you performed this step before proceeding with other investigations. Can you post an image or two of your battery bank? Your "bus bars" sound like they are just wire jumpers.

 

[Ale170]

no load test due to there being no voltage, no connection completes the circuit. The buss bar is chopping the battery in half. Here’s a pic with the battery terminal circled

each cell show 2v as normal

the white stuff is baking Soda, I dislike standing acid So neutralise it asap.

 

[v_green57]

Thanks, that helps.

So, these are just wire jumpers. When somebody says "bus bar" to me I expect a piece of solid metal with a square/rectangular cross section.

Have you temporarily (and very carefully) tried bridging the "bad" one with something? Say a car battery jumper cable?

Can you remove the offending jumper? If so, bend it back and forth and what has happened might become very obvious.

You say "I dislike standing acid". I take that to mean that there's been some? That can wick down the strands of the wire jumpers and seriously wreck them. You won't see it under the insulation. If you ever get things going again, throw a significant load on and measure the individual voltage drops across each jumper. If you have a friend with an IR camera, do that too. You may potentially be looking at other failures in your future.

 

[Ale170]

I took one terminal screw off and reconnected it after cleaning. The baking soda has caused a little corrosion, but It’s reading 24.4v which is good because I had it on a 830w load for 3 hours yesterday
I will find out later if it is ok but it probbably is, fingers crossed

 

[v_green57]

I took one terminal screw off and reconnected it after cleaning. The baking soda has caused a little corrosion, but It’s reading 24.4v which is good because I had it on a 830w load for 3 hours yesterday
I will find out later if it is ok but it probbably is, fingers crossed

Cool.

Now disassemble and clean all the other connections. Seriously. FLA battery banks are NOT "set and forget". Your battery bank has 35 potential points of failure (11 jumpers and 24 battery terminals) for battery acid to attack. Not counting the cells themselves.

 

[OzSolar]

It's can be bad to use baking soda on FLA's, particularly overusing it. The thought being that if left on there it's possible to creep into the cell. I'd be careful with it and rinse it all off the batteries with a sponge and regular water.