Sulfur smell

[Pkelly510]

I have 7 12 volt sealed batteries from harbor freight. They are connected to one large solar panel and it worked fine with an inverter to power our 50” lg tv.

I have a 40amp mppt by EPEVER 2 years old. Three batteries died this winter and I replaced them with new ones. Yesterday was really nice out and first clear sunny day we’ve had in quite a while.

we had really strong sulfur smell. Opened the windows and turn on the tv to drain down the power (inspected they were overloading?
I have a volt meter and they all look like they are 12-13.4

what should I check and how?



is this dangerous? Should I disconnect them?

Pat

 

[Pkelly510]

Readings off the mppt

Panel

37.4volts

1.2 amp

239 kWh



Battery

4.3 amp

13 volts

 

[Diysolar123]

you should defintely not smell sulphur from an SLA battery unless it has failed during charging.
as these are SLA batteries if you have a battery load tester or better yet a battery internal resistance meter you should check each battery seperately.

fyi, a battery resistance meter is NOT the same as a typical digital multimeter resistance meter.

 

[Pkelly510]

That’s with the tv on

 

[Substrate]

STOP RIGHT NOW.

You are most likely just killing those agm's. Much of it due to an imbalance or under-spec for the task at hand.

You stated you have seven of them. Are they all just wired in parallel like I suspect?

What are the specifications of these batteries individually? Are they all the same? Ooops, no you replaced a few.

What is the RATED wattage the solar panels you bought.?

From this distance, you have major imbalance, with one or more outgassing. Perhaps because they were never balanced or given a proper first charge in the first place.

We can try to overcome these issues, and figure out whether you simply need to start over or not. But need more info!

 

[Pierrot]

 

[Substrate]

Yup - and especially bad with sealed AGM (or gel's that he's using don't know) since that means an outgassing event, and the ones that are doing that are never going to be the same again.

I tend to harp on this, but other than starting out with totally sulfated zombies, even when starting out new, imbalance is a major culprit - both from individual batteries being way out from each other, or even more simply, never giving any single battery a full charge to make sure that all the cells internal to it have recombined adequately enough to balance - just slapping agm batts together and hoping they will magically balance out on their own is an invitation for events like this.

But there's hope for Pkelly510 - hope to hear back from him.

 

[Pkelly510]

STOP RIGHT NOW.

You are most likely just killing those agm's. Much of it due to an imbalance or under-spec for the task at hand.

You stated you have seven of them. Are they all just wired in parallel like I suspect?

What are the specifications of these batteries individually? Are they all the same? Ooops, no you replaced a few.

What is the RATED wattage the solar panels you bought.?

From this distance, you have major imbalance, with one or more outgassing. Perhaps because they were never balanced or given a proper first charge in the first place.

We can try to overcome these issues, and figure out whether you simply need to start over or not. But need more info!

They are in Parallel thunderbolt

12 Volt, 35 Amp Hour Sealed Lead Acid Batteries. I’ll get the panel specs and repost. I disconnected each battery and charged them up to full checked them after they had each sat for a day disconnected. I checked to see if there were any that dropped over a day.​

 

[Pkelly510]

Pmaxx 330 IMPP 8.78amps VMPP 37.6 ISC 9.18 amps VOC 46.2
Sun Edison silvantis F330 family
SE- F330BTC 35

 

[Pkelly510]

They are in Parallel thunderbolt

12 Volt, 35 Amp Hour Sealed Lead Acid Batteries. I’ll get the panel specs and repost. I disconnected each battery and charged them up to full checked them after they had each sat for a day disconnected. I checked to see if there were any that dropped over a day.​

 

[Substrate]

RIGHT ON! by charging each individually to full. Now we're on the same page.

After rest, even though this isn't absolutely conclusive, see if any are more than 0.1v different than each other.

Like one at 12.9, other at 12.8 cool - what we're really looking for are the outliers - one at 12.8v, and one at only 12.3. Uh oh. or maybe you cut the charge off early. But you see where I'm going - looking for an obvious trend.