Magnum Remote Start

Gttdnbman · September 2016

Hello,
We live in Zambia and are off grid. We have a house with a Magnum 4124 tied to a remote start. During Hot season we use our fans at night so the remote start kicks the genset on. I set the voltage parameters from 21.4 to float and set the max run time to 1.5 hours. The remote start will start and run the genset but after the 1.5 hours it shuts the genset off but in the morning I have a Genset run fail message on my board and need to reset it before the next evening. My goal is to charge the batteries enough to make it to morning.
Any help/insight would be greatly appreciated!

Brent

BB. · September 2016

That 21.4 volts (10.7 volts for a 12 volt battery bank) is an awful low genset starting voltage for lead acid batteries. I would humbly suggest that your generator starting voltage be set for ~23.0 volts (11.5 volts on a 12 volt battery bank). Perhaps as low as 22.0 volts.

Do you have an idea of how much power your fans draw (Watts for X hours per night, or amps @ 24 VDC * hours per night)?

What size battery bank do you have (Amp*Hour of storage). And how many Amps is your battery charging current from the genset/inverter setup?

I fear that your loads are too great and/or the genset charging power is too low for the battery bank and you are over discharging the battery bank. And to have any reasonable amount of charging, you would need to run the genset a lot longer than 1.5 hours.

But without details on your loads and system setup--I am not making anything more than wild guesses.

-Bill

SolarMusher · September 2016

Why did you set it to float if you don't want it to reach float ?
Extend your max time to 10/12hrs and enter a valid parameter to end the charge the time or SOC that you need: voltage only, Abs end current (with BMK), Abs time, SOC (with BMK), and don't limit the max gen time but let it charge as long as your setting needs to be reached (Ex: max time=12hr, Abs time 15mn or SOC 90%). There are several ways to stop the gen with this ags, I would use 80% SOC or lower to stop this gen early in the morning with no time limit and let your small solar array charge for the rest of the day until float.
A+
Erik

Gttdnbman · September 2016

First of all thanks for the comments, I am very green with Solar and appreciate all the help here. Our house has 8-230AH Bosch Silver Calcium batteries (would these be considered a AGM?). Outback 60 amp charger and an array of panels = about 1200 watts. I guess my reason for setting the voltage at float and the genset max run time of an hour and a half was to charge them enough to to make it to morning and let the solar panels do the rest, but maybe I am killing the life span faster? We have an NGO school in the bush and are very conservative with our energy use. Most evenings the genset never runs just when it gets hot and we run 5/6 fans at night. Normal days we hit float by 15:00hrs. Fans are smaller line voltage fans nothing big. Like I said in the beginning if you have better ideas on what we could do to do it better I would LOVE your insight!

Brent

westbranch · September 2016

I just looked at several links for the , via google... The short answer is NO, they are not AGM, nor are they much more than a car starting battery , except that they have the ability to be left uncharged, from FULL Charge, for an extended period of time...

there was one statement that at low < 20% discharge, they have a ~ 1000 cycle expectancy

What type and how many solar panels do yo have? What is their Watt rating?

Gttdnbman · September 2016

Solar panels are from an African Company called Davis and Shirtliff (although I think they just put there sticker over the actual manufacturer). There are 14- 80 watt, open circuit-22v, SCC-5.04A, Peak Voltage -17v, Peak Current -4.7A

At the end of today I took a picture of the screen of my Outback 60 charger, Its a little greek to me what does it tell you?
Today 0292AH 07.4kwh
039Vp 43.8Ap 1.13kwp
Max 28.3v ABS 00:05
Min 20.6 FLT 00:00

Back to the Bosch batteries if they are basically a car battery what should there charge points be? Should my Magnum Inverter/Charger be set on Flooded/AGM1/AGM2/Custom?

Brent

westbranch · September 2016

Gttdnbman said:

Back to the Bosch batteries if they are basically a car battery what should there charge points be? Should my Magnum Inverter/Charger be set on Flooded/AGM1/AGM2/Custom?

Brent

I can not find anything on their site. You will have to contact a local seller,
this might be a good link for you http://www.batteryman.co.za/products-automotive-batteries/

you should read up on the CC manual as those numbers are important for you to understand... the screen is telling you what you harvested today in ah, Kwh, the voltage at the MPPT of the panels and max Kw you got 5 minutes at Absorb and no Float time, max V into the batteries was 28.3V, minimum was 20.6... Fom that I reason that you have to make some changes to the settings in your CC.

hth...

Magnum Remote Start

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