ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile

soylentgreen

Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile

PNjunction wrote: »

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

It's possible - after today's test, I'll try swapping out the 5 year old starting battery with the brand new one.

, or some parasitic load is keeping the absorb cycle active.

This is also possible, although I believe the parasitic loads are small: on the starting battery, the car stereo in "off" mode, and on the house circuit, a propane leak detector.

It would be disappointing if either of those tiny loads was enough to confuse the charger - after all, the reason I bought this new fancy charger was to just "plug & play" - if I have to go around pulling fuses when I park the van, that kind of defeats the purpose. :-)

PNjunction

Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile

soylentgreen wrote: »

It's possible - after today's test, I'll try swapping out the 5 year old starting battery with the brand new one.

And ONLY that one. I find that removing the most variables leads to faster discovery. Then move on to another variable. Trying to tackle them all at once causes tooth-decay.

This is also possible, although I believe the parasitic loads are small: on the starting battery, the car stereo in "off" mode, and on the house circuit, a propane leak detector.

You believe they are, but you have the ability to measure the parasitic current draw. Leaky caps, bad / weak contacters can surprise you. Trust, then verify.

soylentgreen

Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile

I'm happy to report success!

First, let me summarize the problem:

ProMariner Pro Sport Gen 3 12 Amp Dual Charger, mounted in a RV. Regular starting battery (5 years old) and a brand new house battery (2x Costco 6V GC2s). Rather than wiring the charger's leads directly to the battery (as the instruction manual stated) I wired the charger to the house and starting circuits - this extended each by about 10 feet, and introduced one or two extra fuses in the path. Also, the charger says it's not appropriate for 4D or 8D sized house batteries (and 2xGC2s are about that big).

In two tests, the charger appeared to operate normally, bringing both batteries up to 14.6 while charging, holding at 14.6 while conditioning, but then never dropping back to ready/maintain (aka "float" mode) of 13.4 V.

I went down some dead ends:

* Wiring differences : although there were voltage drops due to fuses while charging, when at steady state the voltages were the same at the charger and at the battery, so I don't believe this was relevant.
* Parasitic loads: yes, but they added up to about 83 milliamps (about 1 Watt) total. Removing them had no effect.

The solution:

* Replacing the starting battery with a brand new one.

Once I did this, the test results were perfect:


Time Charge
(hours) Mode V1 V2 Watts

---

0.0 off 12.63 12.53 0
0.5 chg 13.92 13.81 151
1.0 chg 14.55 14.25 55
2.0 chg 14.61 14.48 44
2.5 CON 14.64 14.63 35 <-- charger switched to "Conditioning" mode
3.0 CON 14.65 14.67 33
5.0 rdy 13.71 13.13 4 <-- charger switched to "Ready/Maintain" mode
11.0 rdy 12.81 12.83 3


Notes:
Battery 1 : 2xGC2 6v Golf Cart Costco (brand new)
Battery 2 : 1 automotive starting battery (brand new)
Watts : measured on 120VAC plug using KillaWatt
Charge Mode: "chg" = "Charging", "CON" = "Conditioning", "rdy" = "Ready/Maintain"


So, apparently it was a bad starting battery causing all the trouble. The failure mode here is interesting (and a bit scary) since if either battery dies, it appears that the charger will just get stuck @ 14.6V and stay there forever. It seems like with all the intelligence it has, it should have some sort of failsafe timeout.

In any case, I'm now a happy camper : I really like the very low watt usage (about 3) when it's in Float mode.

BB.

Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile

That is why you have to keep up maintenance/inspections of your off grid / battery backed power system... There a thousand different ways these things can ruin your life.

-Bill

unseenone

Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile

Hmmm, go figure, glad it's sorted out..

soylentgreen

Re: ProMariner ProSport 12 Charge Profile

Update: I may have celebrated too soon.

I've taken the Van out on a few trips, and brought it back with the House and Starting battery in various states of charge. Twice now (out of perhaps a dozen trips) the Charger seems to get stuck in its "bad behavior" mode.

Latest round: The house battery (2xGC2, e.g. about 250+ amp hours) had been run down to about 12.2V (oops - left the fridge on), and the starting battery was at 12.6). I plugged in the ProMariner and all looked fine. Came back about 12 hours later to find:

Time Charge
(hours) Mode V1 V2 Watts

---

12.0 chg 13.7 15.4 165

In other words, the (bigger) house battery was still not up to 14.4, but the starting battery seemed to be getting a little bit fried (15.4 seems kind of high for a generic SLA battery, right?)

I turned the high beams on in the van which quickly dropped the voltage on the starting battery, but I remain concerned that the charger is a bit... confusable.

soylentgreen

Update 2:   it keeps happening.    The failure mode (where it seems to want to fry the batteries @ 15.0V for 24+ hours) has happened again.    

I'd like to understand, and fix this.  

Theories:
* the charger is just defective.  If I buy a new one it will be fine
* something about my batteries is off (unlikely, as I've now seen this problem with 2 sets of 6Vx2 house batteries and two separate 12V starting batteries).
* the charger is fine, but something about my setup is wrong (too big AH on the house bank?  dirty connection?  common ground?)

BB.

I think you may need to try a different brand of charger...

It is possible that a large battery bank with a small "smart" charger -- I have read about other brands of smart chargers that seem to get confused.

If I had to guess, a 12 amp charger * 1/0.05 rate of charge = 240 AH would be the largest battery bank I would suggest.

-Bill ??

tabbycat

The hydrometer with four little floating balls is $1.97 at WalMart, auto parts stores, etc. It really works and is far better than nothing at all.

soylentgreen

Thanks to all - what's frustrating is that when this thing works, it works perfectly and is just what I need.   It just doesn't work reliably.   When I get some time, I think I'll check all the connections, and maybe try wiring the ground wire directly rather than relying on chassis ground.  

andrewg

I’m a very late arrival to this thread and wonder how it all turned out. The problem you describe seems similar to Xochi who tried a ProSport install in a VW Eurovan camper with the idea of charging and maintaining both the starting battery and coach battery. (The stock charger only charged the house battery and lacked smart circuitry.). I believe he concluded his coach battery exceeded the spec for the capacity of the ProSport. Like you, he also used a chassis ground. In your case, though, I’m wondering if you ever tried connecting to the negative terminal of the starting battery as well as the positive, as per manual. I can find a link to Xochi’s column if you’re interested.