ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile
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soylentgreen
Solar Expert Posts: 111 ✭✭
I just installed a ProMariner ProSport Gen 3 charger in my van. Installation went fine: one lead goes to starting battery, one to house battery.
It's now been charging and I'm a little concerned as to how long it's running for. It's driving both batteries at about 14.6 and has been at this voltage for nearly 24 hours. The manual http://promariner.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/ProSport-Gen-3-Manual.pdf says it will do this voltage while 'conditioning' before it drops back to 13.4 V, but does not say for how long it will do this.
The starting battery is 5 years old and was almost dead, so if it gets cooked I don't care too much, but the house battery is a new set of 2x 6V Costco golf cart batteries, so I don't want to fry them.
How long should I go before I panic and unplug it?
It's now been charging and I'm a little concerned as to how long it's running for. It's driving both batteries at about 14.6 and has been at this voltage for nearly 24 hours. The manual http://promariner.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/ProSport-Gen-3-Manual.pdf says it will do this voltage while 'conditioning' before it drops back to 13.4 V, but does not say for how long it will do this.
The starting battery is 5 years old and was almost dead, so if it gets cooked I don't care too much, but the house battery is a new set of 2x 6V Costco golf cart batteries, so I don't want to fry them.
How long should I go before I panic and unplug it?
Comments
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Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile
Check the SG and temperature of the GC2's. If the SG is indicating fully charged or the temperature is getting hot the charging should stop.
Not sure how 'intelligent' this battery splitter is, or how well-made. -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile
I don't have a way to measure SG, but all the batteries are at ambient temperature (75F) so nothing appears to be overheating. Also, I have a Killawatt meter on the charger and it's using about 35W (down from about 180W during the first few hours of charging). So the current status appears to be:
Voltage: 14.6
Amps : about 1
Temp: 76F -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile
That sounds like Absorb stage (>14 Volts, very low current).
I recommend you get a hydrometer. It can be a real lifesaver. -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile
In lieu of the hydrometer - any rules of thumb? Would 1 day at 14.6V be expected to kill the average car starting battery dead? Or is that something that would take more like a week in your experience? -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profilesoylentgreen wrote: »In lieu of the hydrometer - any rules of thumb? Would 1 day at 14.6V be expected to kill the average car starting battery dead? Or is that something that would take more like a week in your experience?
What will happen with extended periods of high Voltage: loss of electrolyte (water), and excessive heating of plates. You can see if the fluid level is getting low by opening the caps and having a look. You will never see the damage caused by heating the plates. If it is a sealed battery it will just cook and die. How far above "normal" the Voltage is, how hot it's getting, and how long these conditions exist will all have a bearing on it, as well as what the battery is to begin with. You can cook a smaller battery faster than a large one. -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile
Have you considered getting a separate 5-watt PV panel to trickle-charge the starting battery and isolating the starting battery from the house battery charging circuit? -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge ProfileHave you considered getting a separate 5-watt PV panel to trickle-charge the starting battery and isolating the starting battery from the house battery charging circuit?
The van has an 85 watt panel and a SunSaver Duo controller already. Problem is, it's parked inside a garage, and I've found out there is not much sunlight there
(for fun, I even tried rigging a 100W light bulb over the solar panel in the garage just to see what would happen. Nada. Zip). -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile
You must measure the SG, at the very least to make sure that the batteries are balanced. This is pretty common when I see people just slapping two store-bought batteries together without charging them up individually first.
Also make sure you do not have any parasitic loads on the house bank, nor high-resistance connections throughout the system.
If it were me, I'd take the house bank batteries out of line, and make sure they will take a charge, and are balanced, before putting them into house-bank duty. -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge ProfileCariboocoot wrote: »Check the SG and temperature of the GC2's.Cariboocoot wrote: »I recommend you get a hydrometer. It can be a real lifesaver.PNjunction wrote: »You must measure the SG, at the very least to make sure that the batteries are balanced.
I recommend you get a hydrometer. It can be a real lifesaver. Then you must measure the SG, at the very least to make sure that the batteries are balanced. (Cariboocoot and PNjunction plagiarized my advice before I even wrote it)
After you do this, let us know what the readings are so we can help you get your charge parameters correct.
Does your charger have a battery temperature sensor?
--vtMaps4 X 235watt Samsung, Midnite ePanel, Outback VFX3524 FM60 & mate, 4 Interstate L16, trimetric, Honda eu2000i -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile
Thanks again to all who are helping, and although I agree the SG measurement is something I should be doing, I'm not convinced that's relevant at all - I'm more concerned that the charger is just malfunctioning?
Its now 48 hours after I started charging, and the status remains the same:
* 14.6 volts on both house and starting battery:
* Charger is using about 30W (measured by KillaWatt)
* Charger has the "Conditioning" light on
* Temperature of batteries: ambient. Charger temperature : barely warm to the touch.
This doesn't seem right to me. In fact, reading some other reviews of this unit on the web, the most frequent complaint seems to be "Overcharged my batteries!".
I'm not an electrical engineer, but I had just enough EE in school to be dangerous. Please work with me here.
First, review the manual: http://promariner.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/ProSport-Gen-3-Manual.pdf
Based on the exact letter of the instructions in the manual, I've done a few things wrong:
* Rather than attaching the leads directly to the batteries, I cut the ends and hooked them to my house and starting battery circuits.
* The unit is mounted flat rather than vertically
* The unit is screwed to the metal body of the van
* The house battery is about 200AH, but the manual says the unit is only appropriate for "up to Group 31" size batteries
Theories:
* The manual, and the leads, both have big warnings "Do not cut these leads!, Connect directly to battery". At first I thought that perhaps there was a built-in temperature sensor in the ends of the leads. However, after I cut the leads, it's clear this is not true - it's just one wire, fused. In fact, ProMariner sells an extension cable, which appears to just be some wires with more fuses.
* I've traced the path for both batteries, and the only device that's in circuit on both are 40A self-resettable breakers. Perhaps there's a slight Resistance in this, and the charger has some super sensitive battery resistance measurement that's being thrown off?
* Attempting to charge a battery about 2x the AH the unit calls for. My assumption would be that the charging process would be slow, but that it would work. Perhaps I'm wrong, and the unit has some super fancy dV/dT calculation that is thrown off by having a larger battery? Thus, it never sees the charge as "done"?
* Perhaps having the unit grounded to the body of the van is a problem?
* I do have some very minor loads: a 12V propane detector on the house battery, and a car stereo head unit (turned off, but with a vampire draw) on the starting battery. Perhaps the charger can't handle these (If so : that's a dumb design)
* Perhaps the unit is just junk?
Before responding, I ask for you to skim the manual http://promariner.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/ProSport-Gen-3-Manual.pdf first - this is a weird unit, and although it has lots of "dos" and "don'ts" unfortunately the "don'ts" are not explained... -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile
In general, you would want around 2-6 hours of "absorb" (~14.6 volts is fine) time of charging. Longer than that, you are running the risk of over charging.
Run for several weeks to a month at ~14.6 volts, and you will "boil" (electrolysis conversion of water to hydrog+oxygen) to expose the plates (if you do not keep up on adding distilled water).
Go on for months with "elevated" charging voltage, and you will run the risk of corroding the positive plate grid.
So--Yes, your concern is real. And you have probably given it enough chances to fall back to float--And it has failed.
The only "reasonable" condition that may cause this is if you have some momentary heavy load (say an air spring compressor, refrigerator, etc.) that, on occasion, takes the batteries below ~12.7 volts (where most charge controllers will drop out of float and go back to bulk/absorb charging--some may have a timer that takes a few minutes or more below 12.7 volts).
I used to use a 1 amp 12 volt "cube" float charger on cars that were not driven much... Even these chargers (supposidly) designed for the task cause the batteries to need refilling every 1-2 months.
I would even put the cube chargers on a lamp timer and run them 1-2 hours a day--Worked pretty well in general, but not enough charging current when a trunk light was left on (in-laws car).
Finally, I spent way to much money on this Battery Minder:
http://www.amazon.com/BatteryMINDer-Volt-Amp-Battery-Charger/dp/B000JFLSL6
And never had problems with battery water usage or the occasional trunk not shut all the way (on a car with Lowjack, gps, used to have OnStar, etc. continuous loads).
For better or for worse, it did solve my having to replace batteries every 1-2 years on a car that is not driven much.
-BillNear San Francisco California: 3.5kWatt Grid Tied Solar power system+small backup genset -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile
Again, thanks to all who responded. I'm still mulling over what to do. Since the van is parked in a garage (my garage) I can easily put the charger on a timer, and just set it to only charge X hours every month, which would seem a quick & dirty way of solving my initial problem of keeping house & starting battery topped off, without worrying too much about overcharging.
But, I'm still intrigued by why it's not working. The mystery here to me is that the instructions on the device are very insistent that you "must not cut the leads, must connect the leads directly to the battery terminals". I'm trying to decipher if this is marketing speak for "you are stupid and probably would wire it up with a 24gauge wire and some duct tape" or if there is some super magic sensor in the device that would be thrown off by extra wire length. Could the device be sending out exploratory pulses and trying to determine the battery's capacitance or something and extra wire throws the computations off? (This seems...illogical... to me, but what do I know).
What's even weirder is the device claims to be able to charge two 12v batteries that are wired together in a 24v series pack, by connecting the two outputs to each 12v battery individually. It also claims to be able to handle two separate 12V batteries (e.g. house, starting).
Bottom line, I guess what I'm saying is, how do I tell the difference between "defective device" vs. "operator error"? -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile
One possibility--They use the resistance of the leads to limit the output current of the charger (too short of leads, to low of resistance to battery bank, over current from charger, overheating).
But--That is just a guess. A good charger should work "better" with shorter/heavier leads to the battery.
-BillNear San Francisco California: 3.5kWatt Grid Tied Solar power system+small backup genset -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile
From your Manual. It can charge two 12 v batteries because the outputs are isolated from each other.
With the AC power removed and the engine off, check the charge level of each
battery with a DC meter or Handheld DC Tester. If there is no charge level indication
for a battery, check each battery with a hydrometer to determine if it has one or more
bad cells. (batteries should always be replaced in sets, and always the same type.)
If everything above checks out OK, contact ProMariner at 1-800-824-0524 from
8:30 am to 5pm Eastern Time. If your ProSport is within the warranty period of
2 years from the date of purchase, you can go to www.promariner.com where
you will find our customer care return form and instructions.
Battery(s) are not charging, Blue AC Power LED, RED Charging & Battery Type LEDs are On
Confirm all charger cables are installed with the correct polarity connections
at each battery, and that all connections are clean and tight. Reverse polarity
connections will blow output fuse, resulting in no output voltage.
With the charger on, read DC voltage at each battery. If any of the readings are
less than 13 Volts DC proceed with the following:
A. Disconnect AC power at the 120VAC outlet.
B. Remove charger cables from each battery.
C. Reconnect AC power and read DC Voltage across each output cable, if output voltage
is approximately 13.4 Volts DC the charger is ok and each battery should be tested with
a hydrometer with the charger and engine off to determine if one or more batteries have
bad cells. (batteries should always be replaced in sets, and should always be the same type.)
D. If there is no output when trying to read DC voltage check each output fuse
and replace as needed.
If the DC Output Voltage is less than 13 Volts DC, contact ProMariner at 1-800-
824-0524 from 8:30 am to 5pm Eastern Time. If your ProSport is within the warranty
period of 2 years from the date of purchase, you can go to www.promariner
where you will find our customer care return form and instructions. -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile
Without overstating the obvious here, if you have a bad, or going bad battery, the charger may try to compensate by over charging it. This has been my experience with a bad Optima, where the charging voltage gradually increased over months until it finally went over 14.9. I removed the battery and took it and had it tested overnight, and it was bad.
If you can't check the specific gravity of the battery, take it somewhere and have it tested.
I just installed a similar promariner unit, I'll try to get some voltage measurements. I installed it because the antiquated 30 amp charger was in fact dumb, and did constantly boil the juice out of batteries. The unit I installed was a three bank, and I did have to extend one set of leads that was too short. Pretty dumb to make them that short in the first place for the money.
I did have to do some rewiring to ensure all the batteries were isolated, as they were not originally wired that way.
In my case, during testing, it will not work correctly on the three bank system, with only two batteries, it expected them to all be there. -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge ProfileWithout overstating the obvious here, if you have a bad, or going bad battery, the charger may try to compensate by over charging it. This has been my experience with a bad Optima, where the charging voltage gradually increased over months until it finally went over 14.9. I removed the battery and took it and had it tested overnight, and it was bad.
Interesting : my first test was with a new 2x6V GC2 batteries (brand new, 12.4V, but technically too 'big' for the charger) as the house battery, and a normal starting battery (which had been dropped to zero volts a few times). I do have a new starting battery, so I could re-test with that....I did have to do some rewiring to ensure all the batteries were isolated, as they were not originally wired that way.
What does "isolated" mean? This is where I'm confused. My RV has a house battery and starting battery and they share (the horror!) negative ground using the vehicles chassis. Is this wrong? I guess fiberglass sailboats don't' do this. (In fact, the ProMariner manual says something bad about aluminum boats). Could a shared negative ground be my problem? -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile
That's pretty interesting, because I had the same shared negative ground. I am running 2 6 volt golf cart batteries for the house bank, and standard marine deep cycles for the 2 starting battery banks.
I removed the spare negative cable, I believe the intended purpose of this is a battery sharing device, in case your starting battery goes dead, it will get power from the house bank. If you get into that much trouble, you can manually move batteries / cables as needed. I have not research it, and done any extensive testing, but I'm confident an extra set of AWG 8 cables on all the batteries terminate at this device block.
Typical with boats, see if you can trace back any wiring connected to the terminals and determine what they are connected to if possible.
Remove / Test the battery/batteries to remove any doubts.
Over the last couple of years I've been redoing most of the wiring, and replacing the old style fuses with new waterproof ones, replacing any sketchy wiring, and redoing all the ends, updating the electronics, etc. It's a pain..
As far as the batteries being too big for the charger, possibly, my main concern is maintenance, very little parasitic draws on the battery bank when at the dock, so it's plugged in year round, the old style charger just pumped away, I am hoping this setup will be a bit more intelligent. I wouldn't be overly discharging the house batteries without having to drive the boat for a time to charge them back up, and the charger can finish it and maintain it, in no particular hurry. The old charger was also not water resistant at all.
I doubt the shared negative cable does anything at all, unless there is a device as previously mentioned to complete the circuit. -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profilesoylentgreen wrote: »What does "isolated" mean? This is where I'm confused. My RV has a house battery and starting battery and they share (the horror!) negative ground using the vehicles chassis. Is this wrong? I guess fiberglass sailboats don't' do this. (In fact, the ProMariner manual says something bad about aluminum boats). Could a shared negative ground be my problem?
Not wrong, but not fully isolated. There should be no problem with just the positives separate.
The "isolated outputs" on the charging unit refers to it not having common negative or positive for the two sets of leads. Hence the negative of one can be connected to the positive of the other to charge two 12 Volt batteries in series; a 24 Volt bank. -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge ProfileThat's pretty interesting, because I had the same shared negative ground. I am running 2 6 volt golf cart batteries for the house bank, and standard marine deep cycles for the 2 starting battery banks.
Sounds like you have the 3-batt version of the charger (I have the 2-battery version).
Practically, I don't think I could eliminate the common negative chassis ground without major systemic rewiring, nor would I want to: I wanted the ProMariner to be "plug and play".
I'm encouraged by the fact that you are also using 2xGC2s and not having problems(?) to be clear: does your ProMariner go to 13.3V float, after a reasonable amount of time? -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile
I will take a multimeter to it to confirm the voltages, I'll try to do it tomorrow. -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile
OK, so I made the 30 minute trek to get your measurements and pictures. The 6V GC House bank is new, voltage is what I would consider perfect 12.82. The starter bank next to the house bank is over 2 years old, and probably borderline due to the previous charger abuse. It's 13.38 Volts. The 2nd Engine battery bank is also old, and abused, it is at 12.10 volts. The third being the bank I extended.
It's clear I need to replace the 2 deep cycles, but one step at a time, so many expenses so little money.
The actual unit shows Power / System Check / Ready Maintain all lit, it seems happy.
I took pictures of various bits if it is useful. -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile
Have you tried charging JUST your new GC2's by themselves, on the bench and out of the vehicle?
The Pro-Mariner has a "distributed on demand" system, and it may be possible that your poor starting batteries are sucking all the power out of the system, and just gassing, leaving very little for the GC2's, or some parasitic load is keeping the absorb cycle active. -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile
Ok, the plot thickens a bit.
I opened everything up, and have started another charging test. This time, I'm taking voltage measurements with a good voltmeter at multiple points in the circuit, and, Lo and Behold, there appear to be non-trivial voltage drops.
The starting battery (a regular group 34 size battery) is now charging. Voltage taken across the battery terminals: 14.04 volts. Voltage at the battery charger terminals: 14.40 volts. I believe it's charging at roughly 6 amps. V=IR, or R = V/I, so R = 0.34/6 = .057 Ohms. The reason for the voltage drop appears to be that it goes through two fuses on the way to the battery.
If the charger makes precise voltage measurements, I can understand how having a .34 volt error might throw things off. However, wouldn't that be in the opposite direction? If there is some resistance in the system, I would expect the charger to see a higher voltage than the battery is seeing, and thus would cut off the charge process early, no? I'm seeing the opposite pattern (where it gets stuck in Conditioning mode at 14.6 volts and never exits back to Float mode).
I'll take some more measurements when the system reaches steady state - at that point I would expect current (I) to fall to near zero, so V at the charger and at the battery should be much closer.
It wouldn't be that difficult to just wire in a dedicated wire for the charging circuit, if it comes to that. -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile
It is quite possible the battery is bad, have you had them all tested? -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile
Electricity does "flow down hill"... It would seem to indicate that there is another charging source and the charging source you are looking at is not charging at all, and there may be other DC loads present.
-BillNear San Francisco California: 3.5kWatt Grid Tied Solar power system+small backup genset -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile
It's pretty much going like I had suspected. As the current drops down, the voltage measured at the battery, and the voltage measured at the charger are getting closer and closer. After 2.5 hours the charger switched from "Charge" to "Condition" mode.
After 4 hours the voltages are:
House battery : 14.58 (measured @ charger), 14.47 (measured @ battery)
Starting battery : 14.78 (measured @ charger), 14.69 (measured @ battery)
Last time I ran this test, both batteries charged up just fine, but the problem was that the charger never went from "Condition" (14.6) to "Maintain" (13.4) mode, even after sitting for 48 hours. It will be interesting to see what happens this time. -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile
14.5x colors is still actively charging.. After 2-6 hours, you should see about 1 volt drop to float.
-BillNear San Francisco California: 3.5kWatt Grid Tied Solar power system+small backup genset -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile14.5x colors is still actively charging.. After 2-6 hours, you should see about 1 volt drop to float.
-Bill
It may be a difference in terminology, but if you check the user manual (link in the 1st post on this thread) you'll see that this unit works as follows:
"Charging : 14.6V"
"Conditioning : 14.6V"
"Ready/Maintain: 13.4V"
Right now, the "Conditioning" light is on.... -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile
Maintain after battery is fully charged. Holding at 14.5x volts for 1/2 day/days/weeks will boil the battery dry (over charge and damage).
-BillNear San Francisco California: 3.5kWatt Grid Tied Solar power system+small backup genset -
Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge ProfileMaintain after battery is fully charged. Holding at 14.5x volts for 1/2 day/days/weeks will boil the battery dry (over charge and damage).
-Bill
Indeed, that's the question : Why is the charger failing to finish the cycle and drop back to the proper 13.4 voltage? Defective design? Poor installation? Defective unit? Defective batteries? etc. I don't have any clear ideas at this point.
Here's the data so far for my 2nd test.
Time Charge
(hours) Mode V1 V2 Watts
0.0 off 12.69 12.40 0
0.5 chg 14.03 14.53 138
1.0 chg 14.14 14.71 108
2.0 chg 14.39 14.76 67
2.5 CON 14.48 14.73 54
3.0 CON 14.53 14.77 46
4.0 CON 14.58 14.78 40
5.0 CON 14.60 14.79 35
6.0 CON 14.62 14.80 33
7.0 CON 14.63 14.80 32
8.0 CON 14.64 14.80 31
9.0 CON 14.64 14.81 30
Notes:
Battery 1 : 2xGC2 6v Golf Cart Costco (brand new)
Battery 2 : 1 automotive starting battery, 5 years old
Watts : measured on 120VAC plug using KillaWatt
Charge Mode: "chg" = "Charging", "CON" = "Conditioning", "rdy" = "Ready/Maintain"
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