One of my batteries died

halfcrazy

Well i had a batterie die a while back just figured it out tonight now that we have the shorter days. I have 16 Golf cart 6 volt batteries in 4 strings on a 24 volt system and one has a dead cell it is all milky and cloudy looking :-(. so i have pulled it out and unhooked that string and we are running on 12 now. the set is 3 years old so seems a little premature. not shure if i dare to add 1 new batterie or see what 3 strings bring. I may just decide to try the agm's this may be a good opertunity in disgise :roll:

BB.

Re: One of my batteries died

Adding one battery should not cause any problems to your system or other batteries... Just assume that you will probably toss (recycle) the one newer battery when the other 15 go bad in a few more years.

Installing the one new battery will increase the rest of your system capacity by 33% (3 strings back to 4 strings) and allow you to continue to use the other three (presumably good) batteries. Almost no downside in the grand scheme of things.

-Bill

System2

Re: One of my batteries died

So far, I have no personal experience with this kind of problem, but have read here on this form many times, that mixing batteries not of the same age, is a recipe for the distruction of all batteries in the bank, both old and new.
Did I misunderstand something?
Wayne

mike95490

Re: One of my batteries died

You have to weigh the imbalance of mixed batteries, against the remaining bank being over-worked, if you were doing 30% discharge on the original pack, and lost half the pack, you are now nailing the remaining batteries with 60% discharge, keeping the same loads and cycle rates as before. It all depends on how hard you really plan on using the batteries. And don't forget to keep the idle batteries charged, or they will fade into oblivion on their own.

Brock

Re: One of my batteries died

Personally I would separate out the bank test them individually and keep the best 12 of the group. I had the same sort of thing happen when I had 8 batteries and went down to 6, this let me get by for another year on the bank. My guess is their might be other batteries in not so good shape and you would be better served to get the weakest one out of the group anyway. But if there aren't other bad ones you could just add a new battery knowing it will be dragged down to the level of the other batteries in the bank.

halfcrazy

Re: One of my batteries died

I think we are going to use the best 12 as we have discussed before my pv array was a little small for 16 so 12 is a real good match and will still give us almost 3 days reserve in the winter with no input only taking them down to 50% witch i never do the generator will auto start before that

halfcrazy

Re: One of my batteries died

Well i couldnt stand to let the other 3 batteries go so i purchased one new batterie i will keep a close eye on the set. we have 4 more 165 watt panels coming in the spring so i should be pretty close on input versus amphours i will have 880 amp hours of batteries at 24 volts and i will have 14 165 watt panels so should see around 80-85 amps i routinely see 60-64 from the mx 60 now with 10 of these panels.