Someone please explain!!

[BeerBrewer]

I've got a couple questions for you folks that I'm hoping you can answer.

Last December I recieved to LiTime 100AH LiFePO4 batteries. I stored them in the basement (temp range 60-70 degrees F) in their original box. Every month of so I'd measure the voltage of the cells and they were both within .01 volts of each other. They did not seem to lose any voltage. I had planned to install them in my trailer but that got delayed. So the other day I went to install them and checked the voltage. One read 13.10 volts and the other read 2.84 volts. A couple montha ago I purchased a NOCO Genius 10 battery charger. So I connected the second battery (the one at 2.84V) to the NOCO to see if it could "wake-up". the battery and it didn't work. I tried a few times and nothing worked. This battery is going back to LiTime.

After giving up on the that battery, I decided to charge up the first one with the NOCO. I plugged it in the connected it to the battery, selected the lithium charge mode and let it run. It seemed to be charging just fine, so I let it run until the green light slowly flashed. According to the manual, the slowly flashing green light indicates that battery if fully charged. After removing the charger I checked the voltage of the battery and it only read 12.91 volts!!! I thought LiFePO4 batteries went up to 13.32. Do I have a problem? Is this normal for the voltage to drop from 13.10 to 12.91 after sitting on a charger all night?

So then I put the charger back on the battery, turned it on again and read the voltage while charging. It only read 12.97.... It seems that the NOCO charger only outputs 12.97 volts. Unfortunately I can't get a voltage reading from the charger without something connected to it.

As a last resort I took my WFCO 9855AD converter (which has been updated with the laterst software) and connected it to the battery. While connected to battery the voltage read 14.7 volts. I thought that this would bump the voltage of the battery up to 13.32 volts. I left it connected for 7 hours and after disconnecting it from the WFCO the voltage still onlu read 12.94! Is this battery ruined also?

Is my NOCO charger also bad? It says it should out-put 14.4 volts, but I only can measure it putting out 12.94 volts.

I'm so ready to scrap all this and go back to the crappy lead acid battery that can't even open one of the slide out on the trailer.

 

[ScropusGobbleBottom]

hmm

 

[mikefitz]

LiTime 100AH LiFePO4 batteries

The batteries are being charged with chargers that are not ideal, the NOCO in particular is a poor choice for lithium batteries.
What is happening is that the battery cells are slightly out of balance, the high charge voltages are causing BMS protection, due to cell overvolts. It appears the battery is faulty with a reduced voltage. Applying a load should cause the battery to work normally.
The issue with the stored battery is that that it was stored at a low SOC and entered low volts protection . To recover from this either a 'dumb ' charger, power supply set at over 12v, or a 12v battery, ( car battery), needs to be connected to wake up the problem battery.

When connected to the converter 14.6 charger its almost certain the battery is entering protection mode. The battery may be fully charged but due to the BMS 'off state' you are seeing a reduced voltage, ( there is a volt drop across the 'off' BMS).. Internally the cell series volts woud be in the region of 13.4 volts.

Application of a load on the battery should allow the BMS to recover and you will see the true voltage.

I don't think there is anything wrong with the batteries. Failing to charge during storage, using unsuitable chargers , and lacking information from Litime on how the BMS operates, has resulted in this situation.

Some AC chargers, the Victron range for example, have complete user control of charging voltages and display charge voltage, charge current, and amount of power used to charge the battery. Note when setting a charge voltage , for example 14.6 in your converter, this is the 'target' voltage. With a lithium battery the voltage seen on the battery over most on the charge cycle will be around 13.5 +/- 0.1. Once the battery is near full charge, it will rise to over 14 volts. What usually happens, due to the unbalanced cells, is that the BMS stops charging at around 14 volts, charge current drops to zero and the charger 'jumps ' to target volts.

 

[robbob2112]

I use this with my litime 200ah plus battery. And I seem to be seeing many people reporting issues with NOCO not working well with lfp batteries. I like NOCO for a lot of things, but not this.

Amazon.com

It will charge fully charge a 100ah version in about 5 hours from 20% SOC

 

[fuzzmunky415]

According to the manual, the slowly flashing green light indicates that battery if fully charged.

My Noco Genius 10 manual says 100% charge is when the green light is steady...it has no issues charging my Valence and DCHouse 12V lifepo batteries.

https://no.co/media/nocodownloads/format/g/e/genius10na_user_guide_4.9.2024a_2.pdf

 

[BeerBrewer]

The NOCO charger was connected to the battery for over 24 hours and the green light never went solid. After 24 hours on the charger the voltage only read 12.91. So yesterday I took the batteries out and connected them one at a time to trailer (without the converter installed) just to see what would happen. The one reading 12.92v ran everything in the trailer and the other ran nothing. Interestingly enough after I remeasured the voltages of the batteries and the one that measued 12.91 volts now measured 13.32 volts! Somehow by apply a load to battery the voltage jumped up. I can only guess that the BMSs in these batteries isn't very good. I still have not figured out what to do with the other battery than only reads between 2.84 and 3.2 volts. I have a feeling that its not going to be easy to return the battery to LiTime.

 

[robbob2112]

LiTime does design their own BMS.

The one that jumped up might have been in a protect mode of some sort until you put a load on it. I would cycle it a few times and see if that stays good.

The one reading low is in a protect mode - you will need to wake it up to use it. There are instructions on litime's website or you can email support, they generally answer emails in 24 hours.

They will require you to run the wakeup instructions prior to returning anyways. If you run that and it doesn't work chances are they will just ship a new one verse having you return it. If that ends up the case you can pop the top and check for loose wires or any physical damage and if nothing works just replace the BMS with a 4S version of your own.

In any case it sounds like you are outside the DOA warranty period so I will be interested to hear how your conversation goes. I have been really impressed with their customer service so far. I was exchanging emails with an engineer about how they sized the bus bars and questioning how they calculated the capacity. They were a bit optomistic about the brass characteristics verse copper but overall the bus bars would carry the 300amps rated and then a fair safety margin.

 

[Q-Dog]

The same thing happened to this guy.

My 100AH LiTime lifepo4 battery won't charge

I bought 2 LItime 100ah batteries last November and they've been in storage in my basement ever since. I had planned to install then in my trailer over the winter but, I injured my wrist and needed surgery. So I'm ready to install them and I measured the voltages. One measured 13.4 and the...

diysolarforum.com

 

[robbob2112]

same guy - he is double posting the same basic question

 

[BeerBrewer]

Actually in the other post I was basically asking about what to do with the battery reading the very low voltage (2.84 to 3.2 volts) and in this post I was asking how or why the voltage on the other battery jumped up from from 12.91 volts to 13.32 volts by just applying a load to it. I was also looking for input about the NOCO charger. Someone above answered that the battery was probably in protect mode and some seem to like the NOCO charger and some don't. I don't think mine puts out enough voltage to properly charge a lithium battery and I've emailed NOCO a few questions about it.

I apologize if I caused some confusion, that was not my intention. Even though I'd just about given up on the very low voltage battery, but after seeing the voltage jump on other "good" I thought I should mention that I tried it and it didn't work.

 

[Bob142]

The one reading 12.92v ran everything in the trailer and the other ran nothing. Interestingly enough after I remeasured the voltages of the batteries and the one that measued 12.91 volts now measured 13.32 volts! Somehow by apply a load to battery the voltage jumped up. I can only guess that the BMSs in these batteries isn't very good. I still have not figured out what to do with the other battery than only reads between 2.84 and 3.2 volts. I have a feeling that its not going to be easy to return the battery to LiTime.

I recommend you review what @mikefitz wrote yesterday... He described in detail what was going on with each battery and has suggested ways of dealing with each.

Someone please explain!!

I've got a couple questions for you folks that I'm hoping you can answer. Last December I recieved to LiTime 100AH LiFePO4 batteries. I stored them in the basement (temp range 60-70 degrees F) in their original box. Every month of so I'd measure the voltage of the cells and they were both...

diysolarforum.com

 

[fuzzmunky415]

The NOCO charger was connected to the battery for over 24 hours and the green light never went solid.

That was my experience too...I recall the new DCHouse battery was for all intents 'charged' after a few hours, but the pulsing green light took nearly 3 days before it went solid.

I've emailed NOCO a few questions about it.

I suspect they will tell you the charger dials down drastically towards full charge, and spends as long as it takes to finish a 'complete' charge.

The exact same thing happens with several different NOCO chargers I've used over the Valance and now the DCHouse battery, it's just how it behaves in LiFePo mode. You can of course still use the battery after it reaches pulsing green, which could increase longevity anyway. I'm hopeful you will report what NOCO explains if they respond. Cheers.

 

[fuzzmunky415]

BTW, I will also share that I had brought a regular AGM battery back to life using the NOCO 10A charger, and IIRC, it says something along the lines of hooking the 12V battery up with the 6V setting for a few hours, as this will add sufficient charge to get the cells (or in this case, the BMS) into a state to receive a proper 12V charge. Please consult the manual on the particulars.

edit: reread the manual and can't find it, so now going off memory (beware lol), Since my AGM (like your LiFePo) was well below 5 volts, throwing any charger on it with the 12V setting would results in no charge. Some algo's for 12V charging simply won't work below 5V. Solution-charge the 12V to 6V first...sufficient charge level should allow the 12V charge to resume charging back to full 12V.

 

[fuzzmunky415]

Much like mikefitz, I and others were mentioning wrt waking up the low V battery, the NOCO 10 has the 'force mode', which like Mike mentioned is a 'dumb' mode of simply pumping a full 10A into the battery for 5 minutes, then resumes smart charging at the present setting. Supposedly, this can work as low as 1 volt. The 6V charge I discussed above was a smaller NOCO model, I own several. I see from the other thread you got it to wake, and accept a full charge! Enjoy.