electrical problem

System

Ihave a whisper 400 12v. Tied into (6) 2volt batteries in series.The first battery tied too the turbine output (+) is boiling over.The rest seem fine.Can anyone tell me whats wrong.Thanks

BB.

Re: electrical problem

Just a guess--but it sounds like one (or more) of the cells in that battery is going bad...

Take a hydrometer and measure the specific gravity with a hydrometer (Battery FAQ) in all of your cells and see how they look (all should be pretty much the same).

Also, take a volt meter and measure the voltage across each battery (and each cell if the cell interconnects are available)... Everything should be with in a 0.10 volt (or less) of each other if they are all well balanced...

Depending on a lot of things, if you batteries are over a few years old, they may be getting close to needing replacement (typically, you replace the entire bank at once)... Also, if there has been "rough service" (vibration, over or under charging, cells "boiled dry", etc., this can cause batteries to fail sooner).

Lastly, is your charge controller working correctly. The batteries when normally charging should be somewhere around 13.8 to 14.2 volts or so when charging (or ~15 volts or so if charging hard and/or equalizing the batteries).

Typically, a wind system is setup to always charge the battery (direct connection from wind turbine to battery) and a "charge controller" that turns on when the battery is fully charged--"dumping load" to a heater/resistor bank. If the charge controller is not working correctly, you could also be overcharging the battery bank (but not usually just one cell).

-Bill

niel

Re: electrical problem

i too think that cell is either bad or going bad, but you might try putting that cell into the middle of the mix along with the cell that is connected to the other polarity as end batteries tend to take the brunt of charging/discharging.