Commissioned my third battery build and like always a little drama. The batteries arrived from Eel batteries in 4 days and 4 of the sixteen cells were damaged. They were dropped upside down and the 2 bolt terminals were bent almost touching the case and others were dented by an nimrod that welded the special terminals on. After documenting and photographing, to Eel’s credit, three days later I received 4 replacements. Now the weirdness: One cell that was pristine looking with the same QR code as a few others was 95mv lower than the others. Figured it must have missed the shipping/storage charge. So I gave it a charge and it seemed hungry and I stopped at 3.310 Volts, about 13mv over the others and counted on it to drop at rest, which it did, -.006mv. Internal resistance exactly the same as the others, close enough. Rrrrrighht. I took my inverters off line and put the house on grid so I could play/charge. I had brought the other two batteries to the same state of charge so I could bring all three up together and knowing that my lowest charge current total is 4 amps divided by three so I knew I could really reduce the charge in the “knee” to give the 2amp balance JK a chance to have a go at it. Well I started a charge and got it up to 90 amps (30per battery) and quickly realized the that odd cell needed some help and was hungry. (Reinforces the meaning, voltage is NO state of charge with Lifepo4). So I put a power supply on that cell to keep it in equilibrium with the rest and nursemaided it on the way up, keeping it within 3mv of the average and after a while tapered the current to nothing. The bulk was at 55.1 but I moved the float up to 55. When it arrived at bulk I had already reduced the overall charge to 4 amps and the delta was 170mv. Luckily, two low cells were next to each other so I helped them up with the power supply again. 14 hours later it looks good at .003 delta. Disabled the charge/discharge on the other two batteries to let them go to rest while I hold the new kid overnight at 55.1 to learn it’s lesson. Time will tell.
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