lost capacacity

wellbuilt

Ok, 
 i went to check my battery's , and all seamed fine. 
 The charger was in float 13.7 volts 2 amps the sg was .275 . 
 I started to burn power ? 
 The battery's stayed up to 12.4/5 volts under load and bounced up to 12.6 in about 1 min .
 In about 11/2 hrs I dropped down to 12.5 wats running the same equipment I had on last week that draped me to 12.3 in no time .
 I will see how the batteries last over night , if there is good power in the morning i will  run my smart charger on my batteries for the day at 6volts and charge 11/2 hr  alternating from one to the other .
 If things look not so good I'll take the battery's home and bench charge them . 
 I swapped out the mppt controler for a Morningstar sun saver l20 
 and after a few hours in the sun I'm blinking full charge . 
 I did give the mppt controler a good beating with a screw driver last week and had some lights flashing that really shouldn't have come on . 
 Maybe a sticky button jammed it up . 
 

Estragon

Sounds like swapping controllers solved the problem. Beating the offending controller may or may not fix it, but probably feels good!

westbranch

If it does NOT start to charge, the next beating will start promptly at Noon next Saturday!  with a bigger hammer

wellbuilt

You guys are Killen me .
 Well last night I burned some power , ( average night ) at 1100 the battery's were down to 12.2 again ? 
 At 400am the voltage was up at 12.5? I figure 90% witch seems ok .
 Why would I get a different type of reading . 
 Up till now my volts would drop slowly and if I un plugged the load the volts mite jump one point.
 Now it's rebounding 3 points .
 Any thoughts .

westbranch

How soon after getting to 12.2 V or ?  and when did you take the reading....  ie were you A) watching it drop to 12.2V or did you unload the battery and immediately take/get the 12.2 reading or did you C) wait a couple of hours before measuring? there is a big difference between A&B and C.... A and B are both essentially 'loaded' Voltage,.... C is the proper way to get the AT REST Voltage....  and at 4 AM that is why you got 12.5V after ~ 5 hrs of rest...   had you done a series of B readings say each 1/2 hr you would have observed the rise in voltage .... the faster the rise the healthier the battery... hth

mcgivor

wellbuilt said:

You guys are Killen me .
 Well last night I burned some power , ( average night ) at 1100 the battery's were down to 12.2 again ? 
 At 400am the voltage was up at 12.5? I figure 90% witch seems ok .
 Why would I get a different type of reading . 
 Up till now my volts would drop slowly and if I un plugged the load the volts mite jump one point.
 Now it's rebounding 3 points .
 Any thoughts .

What you're seeing is normal, the battery voltage drops under load, when the load is disconnected, the voltage recovers over time, you will hear, let the battery rest for 4 hours, referred to when determining the capacity of AGM batteries, since the SG can't be tested. Over time, as the battery ages, the volt drop under load will get higher, not an attempt to solve your problem, just an explanation of why you see the different voltage.

wellbuilt

I started with 12.7/8 at dark .
then used some power for 3/4 hours. 
 At that point I was at 12.2 I used 320 watt just guessing .
 Turned off the load , and the voltage rebounded to 12.3 
 then I went to bed and at 400am I was at 12.5 
 incident look for 4 hours 

wellbuilt

wellbuilt said:

Ok, 
 i went to check my battery's , and all seamed fine. 
 The charger was in float 13.7 volts 2 amps the sg was .275 . 
 I started to burn power ? 
 The battery's stayed up to 12.4/5 volts under load and bounced up to 12.6 in about 1 min .
 In about 11/2 hrs I dropped down to 12.5 wats running the same equipment I had on last week that draped me to 12.3 in no time .
 I will see how the batteries last over night , if there is good power in the morning i will  run my smart charger on my batteries for the day at 6volts and charge 11/2 hr  alternating from one to the other .
 If things look not so good I'll take the battery's home and bench charge them . 
 I swapped out the mppt controler for a Morningstar sun saver l20 
 and after a few hours in the sun I'm blinking full charge . 
 I did give the mppt controler a good beating with a screw driver last week and had some lights flashing that really shouldn't have come on . 
 Maybe a sticky button jammed it up . 
 

I guess I'm just going to use the system and see if the battery get drawn down enough to turn off the inverter .
 I've done every thing I know to do , I the batteries don't make the nigh

wellbuilt

I guess my battery's just have some age on them . 
I added a morning star battery  Monitor yesterday and it lookes nice for what it is. 
 Battery sg was looking above full charge today between 1.275 and 1300 all cells look the same . 
 The gadge dropped from 100% to 70% over 4 hour of lights inverter and tv plus phone charging (60 70 watts )
for 4 hours,    Sooooo I'm thinking that I should be between 70/80 %  
 Then 7 hrs with my C-PAC sleeping and I still had 70% battery under load . 
  The battery bounce back to 80% in a about 2 mins  unfortunately the sun popped out so I don't really know what the resting voltage ended up being .  
  I'm just going with it for now