Opinion about Crown batteries for solar system

lukaszwojnicki

Hello everybody. I am a new on Your forum. I am from Poland in Europe. I will buy batteries to my PV system. I decidied to buy Trojan T105 8 pieces to 48V bank. Today seller told me he is waiting for this batteries, because they are on the ship from USA. He has Crown batteries to me, small cheaper than Trojan. I don't know Crown batteries and I would like ask You about opinion and compare with Trojan. It will probalby CR220 6V batteries.

I have some experiences from two years of using my system and friend's pv system. I have Outback 80 charge controller and about 4,2 kWp power from panels. Now I have dead start car batteries .

Thank You very much for answer.
Regards,
Lukasz

Cariboocoot

Re: Opinion about Crown batteries for solar system

Welcome to the forum.

In my opinion Crown batteries are better than Trojans because they are cheaper and they do not require the elevated Absorb Voltage that Trojan does (14.4 Volts vs. 14.8 on a 12 Volt system).

However that is for the batteries we get here in Canada. Where yours are made/shipped from and how long they may sit before selling I don't know. You're half a world away so they may not be the same.

lukaszwojnicki

Re: Opinion about Crown batteries for solar system

Thank You for an answer.
In Poland all Trojan and other batteries are shipped from USA. My friend has 3 banks of T125 Trojan from about 4 years and there is no problem. I know about shipping time from USA to Poland, discharging, etc. But I was searching local batteries. There is no interesting. Everywhere is cutting of the costs. Batteries which was good 2 decades ago, now it is only producer's logo on the battery.

Crown batteries are better to my system, because I have MeanWell TN1500 inverter, which has upper voltage set to 60V. But he has wrong set of reading voltage and when on batteries is about 58,6V device is restarting, because "thinking" that there is 60V. This difference can not be regulated. Trojan has 59,4V charging voltage (if I good remember) where Crown has "normal" 58,1V and this will be good in my system. Of course for Equalization mode I must turn off inverter in both batteries.

Thank You for helping. Tommorow I will order Crown batteries :-D. I would like to know opinion about this batteries from source. Because in Poland there is no information about this. Seller says that Crown is not popular mark as Trojan, he will try to enter Crown to Poland. And price of course is lower than Trojan.

Regards,
Lukasz

lukaszwojnicki

Re: Opinion about Crown batteries for solar system

Hello,
Yesterday Crown's arrived to me . Now I am waiting for the sun to charge them. It arrived with voltage from 6,34V to 6,38V and density about 1,24. It means that are charged about 60%.

westbranch

Re: Opinion about Crown batteries for solar system

You can use the charger function to trickle charge that battery bank if it looks like you won't see the sun for a while. It will help a tiny bit...

lukaszwojnicki

Re: Opinion about Crown batteries for solar system

Where can I find this option to set in Outback Flexmax 80 charger?. I set bulk charging to 57,6V, Float 55,6V and Absorbtion time to 2 hours. In more light months I will try to do Equalization at 62,4V.

Maybe Crown's service will respond to my quesitons about charging, because they are not responding from about one week...

Maybe somebody will try to help me how voltages and times should I set for Crown CR220 48V battery bank?. In Trojan's datasheet it was very good described. In Crown's it is not so good .

Cariboocoot

Re: Opinion about Crown batteries for solar system

No sun = no charging from the FM80. If the panels are hooked up it will produce something, but not full current.

I think westbranch was referring to using charger built-in to inverter if there is one or else a stand-alone battery charger to make sure the batteries are at least above 75% SOC if the sun is not co-operating.

You have the right Absorb Voltage of 57.6 for those. It is a starting point as is the 2 hour Absorb time. The batteries need to be cycled to see if both are sufficient to achieve full charge on a sunny day after use. If not, increase Absorb time first; watch the current through that stage and see where it plateaus in respect to how long it has been in Absorb. The FM80 allows you to set an End Amps value that should be at or near this level, with maximum Absorb time being longer than it takes to reach that current plateau.

Your Float Voltage level should be adjusted down a bit. 55.2 would be maximum, and you may find it works better at 54.

The Equalization Voltage is too high. It should not need to be more than 60 Volts.

Again all Voltage/currents/time figures are guidelines; you have to check system performance over a few days and see how they work, then adjust the settings to get the best performance for your particular application.

westbranch

Re: Opinion about Crown batteries for solar system

Yes I was referring to the Meanwell 1500TN inverter, it has a small trickle charger built in.
Manual
http://www.meanwell.com/search/TS-1500/TN,TS-1500-E.pdf
Spec sheet
http://www.meanwell.com/search/tn-1500/TN-1500-spec.pdf

hth

Vic

Re: Opinion about Crown batteries for solar system

Hi Lukasz,

Here is a Data Sheet on the CR 220 battery, in English (sorry):

http://www.solar-electric.com/lib/wind-sun/Crown-CR-220-specs.pdf

The Target SG is 1.275, as you probably know.

I did not see the recommended Float or EQ voltages. 55, or even 54 V seems high to me. You could adjust your Float voltage by watching how well the batteries remain charged, after hours of being in Float. If a battery bank spends a lot of time in Float, even for off-grid systems, if the Float V is too high, plate erosion can occur (IMO).

FWIW, the Flooded banks here use a Float V of 52.6 V. Good Luck with the new battery bank, Vic

lukaszwojnicki

Re: Opinion about Crown batteries for solar system

Hi Friends,

Cariboocoot wrote: »

No sun = no charging from the FM80. If the panels are hooked up it will produce something, but not full current.

Yes, I know about this in Outback. But in my installation, when today was cloudy and rainy, there was a 100 - 150W; ~3A of power.

I will wait for some information from Crown service about voltages. From Trojan I got some mathematical formula to count, probably ABS time for Trojan (I don't remember, it was few months ago). I must find this email and check this. Maybe it will be good for Crown's batteries.

@Westbranch:
Thank You for finding this. I know it. I am not using built in charger. It is not good idea, guys from service in Poland said, that many devices was broken after connecting panels to this charger. I have this TN 1500 about two years. I bought it from friend, who used it about one year. On warranty it was 4 times in service. Twice they replaced mainboard, once device was not turning on after unbox and 4th firmware was upgraded. Next bad news is not possible to calibrate reading of voltage by factory and it reads higher voltage than is on batteries, about 1,2V. I asked few users of this in Poland, they have other readings, from 0,5V to 1,5V difference !!. Serviceman from Taiwan sent me an information which dimmer I need to replace, then it will be closer to real voltage. But I didn't time to play of this. Maybe in future. As inverter TN 1500 is good device.

@Vic
Thank You for this datasheet. I found this earlier. No problem in English, better to read than translation to Polish. Maybe without mistakes . But this datasheet is not clear to read how should be each voltages. From this we can read about SOC, cycles, etc. No clear data about EQ, ABS and Bulk charging... As I wrote earlier, I sent an email to support, but they not answer for my quesitons . If they will do, I will copy informations.

westbranch

Re: Opinion about Crown batteries for solar system

Lucasz, I am assuming you have access to the mains power as it looks like you have a light on the ceiling when you took the pictures.

There is one more item you need, a good 3 stage charger, to keep your batteries fully charged in times when there is no sun.. If you do not have mains power, a small generator big enough to supply 44Amps @ 48V (2100+ W), say ~ 10 amps at 220Volts would do, ~ 2200W rated continuous output, so about 3000W rating ( max output ) would be fine. An inverter style, Honda or Yamaha is very easy on fuel and quiet, compared to the3600RPM types that scream while running.

To not have a charger will lead to early death of your batteries..

lukaszwojnicki

Re: Opinion about Crown batteries for solar system

Hello Friends,
I have another question. Some time ago I was reading brochure from Trojan, where they were comparing Trojan batteries to US Battery. Of course Trojan was the best, US Batteries was dead much before than Trojan.

Yesterday I was found newer brochure and there is comparing about Trojan to US Batteries and Crown. Of course US Batteries and Crown are worst.

There is a picture from this pdf.



Maybe You will have better experiences about this and can help me to understand this . In Europe there is no information about this. I have knowledge only from producer's materials.

Cariboocoot

Re: Opinion about Crown batteries for solar system

Never believe the info from a company. They are trying to sell you their product and therefor will slant any 'tests' in their favour. Or even outright lie.

All they have to do is pick 'similar' (i.e. different capacity or application type) batteries to test and they get the results they want. T875 is 170 Amp hours @ 20 hour rate. The US Battery listed does not give a model that would indicate Amp hour capacity, only that it is 8 Volt and XC (extra capacity) design. We can hope it is the 8VGCXC2 which is also 170 Amp hours at the 20 hour rate. The Crown is 165 Amp hours @ 20 hour rate.

Note also that these are 8 Volt batteries, rarely used in RE but there's no reason they couldn't be with 24 or 48 Volt systems. The Trojans operate at a higher Voltage than the other two. And if you charge them all the same, they will not perform the same. Note also that these tests are run from utility source charging with controlled discharge as well; neither of which is found in an RE application.

Out here in the real world Trojans are more expensive per Watt hour capacity, need higher charging Voltage (as per their spec) which is not always attainable, and do not last noticeably longer than the other brands. I've got nearly 500 cycles on my US Batteries and they have not lost significant capacity yet; still completely usable. According to that chart even the Trojans would be dead by now.

The truth is lab information for battery life doesn't mean anything in real world application. More batteries are killed by misuse than anything else, and the brand doesn't matter when that happens; you can kill an expensive battery just as easily as a cheap one, it just costs more. There are people who have gotten satisfactory life from warehouse GC2's that cost <$100 each. And there are people who have murdered Surrette's in one year.

In short, don't get hung up on battery brand names as an assurance of quality or longevity.

lukaszwojnicki

Re: Opinion about Crown batteries for solar system

Hello,
Yes, I have the same opinion about this, but I would like to consult it with specialists from the other side of the Earth .

Crown is a not known in Poland and Europe as Trojan is. Sellers would like to sold what they have and from have good money. My seller has a Trojan and is starting with Crown.

Wally

Cariboocoot wrote: »

Re: Opinion about Crown batteries for solar system


The truth is lab information for battery life doesn't mean anything in real world application. More batteries are killed by misuse than anything else, and the brand doesn't matter when that happens; you can kill an expensive battery just as easily as a cheap one, it just costs more. There are people who have gotten satisfactory life from warehouse GC2's that cost <$100 each. And there are people who have murdered Surrette's in one year.

In short, don't get hung up on battery brand names as an assurance of quality or longevity.

A LOT of wisdom in that concise statement from Cariboocoot --- could not agree more.

LOTW

DLwindsun wrote: »

I just wanted to clarify something. Last year Crown updated their charge voltages for the SLI (CR) line of batteries when used in a renewable energy application. This is directed towards PV/WIND mostly. Below is a link to the PDF with these changes. They increased the voltages to overcome the resistance in the batteries to prevent sulfation.

http://www.solar-electric.com/lib/wind-sun/Crown-safety-first.pdf

Voltage settings for a 12 volt battery.
Absorption - 15 volts
Float - 13.5 volts
Equalize - 15.6 volts

Those numbers and that pamphlet are from 2007? I think?


https://www.crownbattery.com/en/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Deep-Cycle-Product-Support-Broch.pdf

That one is from 2013. Do you have any extra info on this?

I have 16 6crp400 and am wondering what others are using for voltages with these Crown RE batteries. The numbers Crown gave me were the ones from the brochure I linked to, but 1.275 doesn't happen every day with those. Have to do the EQ every 2 weeks which is what they say but concerned about sulfation by not charging fully every day.

BB.

Thank you very much for letting us know about the old vs new manual LOTW... I have sent an email to David for him to review what is the latest and greatest--Probably hear something back after Tuesday (Monday is US Holiday).

Take care,
-Bill

DLwindsun

LOTW wrote: »

Those numbers and that pamphlet are from 2007? I think?


https://www.crownbattery.com/en/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Deep-Cycle-Product-Support-Broch.pdf

That one is from 2013. Do you have any extra info on this?

I have 16 6crp400 and am wondering what others are using for voltages with these Crown RE batteries. The numbers Crown gave me were the ones from the brochure I linked to, but 1.275 doesn't happen every day with those. Have to do the EQ every 2 weeks which is what they say but concerned about sulfation by not charging fully every day.

The copyright says 2007 but I can assure you that is the latest from Crown for the CR batteries in a solar/wind system.

LOTW

DLwindsun wrote: »

The copyright says 2007 but I can assure you that is the latest from Crown for the CR batteries in a solar/wind system.

Do you know if those numbers apply to the RE series as well? (6crp400)