diy solar

diy solar

Valence U27-12XP red LED flashes every five seconds.

Thanks for that -- that looks pretty easy actually -- I'll have to wait until I get to my shop with my power supply... I really really hope it works...
 
Man -- this isn't looking good -- I cracked the case and checked the voltage -- they differed substantially from what the software suggested:

SoftwareActual (DMM reading)
Module10.697V10.18V
Cell 13.373V3.35V
Cell 21.001V0.06V
Cell 32.962V3.44V
Cell 43.359V3.34V

I'd imagine a cell at 0.06V is dead. I'll try and "zap" it back to life when I get back to my power supply -- but I'm not feeling good about it. Seems the other cells are nicely charged -- if cell two had similar voltage it would be sitting at ~13.6V, which is basically what I'd expect for a "full" valence battery -- at least based on my charger.
 
Well good news and bad news -- I got the battery on a bench power supply and I've been able to get the "Under 2.3V" flag to go away by charging all cells to 3.3V. It appears Cell #2 is holding a charge. I'm going to bring it up to 3.360V so the battery can roughly become balanced....

Unfortunately the red light is still flashing - but I think I know why... I think this is due to when I plugged it into the charger last time, it didn't get all cells above 2.3V before 1 minute...

Here's from REV-1:

Capture.JPG
and from REV-2:
redBlink.JPG
It seems a bit ambiguous in REV-2 instructions -- but if the same logic came over from REV-1 -- it's likely I need to draw the battery down and then try to recharge it again -- this time using <.5A.

I'll feel much more comfortable doing this if the battery is balanced -- that way I don't have to worry about a single cell taking the brunt of this "over-discharge"... and I can basically guarantee that a <.5A charge will get the cells above 2.3 or 2.45V pretty quickly.

Stay tuned... hope I can figure this out!
 
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Well -- I got it working -- details in the Valence XP Super Thread:
 
... And then it plummeted again as soon as I lower the amperage. Don't think there is a happy ending with this one....
 
I feel your pain! I have also one battery exhibiting the same behaviour...cell 2 on mine is dead also... that's funny it is the same cell
Maybe we could rebuilt one battery with our 2 dead! ;-)
 
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Hah yeah - that would be nice. I'm going to try and crack the case open one of these days -- but I'm a bit reluctant because there's a pretty powerful arc welder inside of it!
 
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