Battery D is dead, probably.

I gained access to a decent battery charger last night and let the battery.  I let it charge at 10A and when I checked on it a few hours later, it dislayed F01.  I looked this up and it means "F01 Internal Shorted Cell Battery - Cannot be charged. Have battery checked by certified auto service center."  

So this week, I'm going to drop that battery off at the vendor and see if they can get it working.  Apparently, this is one of the first two batteries I got in Oct of 2009.  It's been going bad all summer, so hopefully I can get them to replace it if need be. 

On another note, I finally finished up the leftover tank of propanee from last year.  Yesterday and today I've been running the propane heater quite a bit.  Yesterday I ran it for over an hour during the day, and this morning I let it run for 30 minutes as it warmed the van from 25F to 50F.  So a new canister is in and I have 3 remaining.

Battery Saga continues

In my previous post, I commented on battery C dragging down the system. Since then, I recharged battery C and put it back into the array. For the first day or two, things were fine. However, when I returned the next week, the entire array was again reading 19V. I ran the battery equalizer function on the charge controller and this failed to resolve the issue.

I didn't do anything else with it right away, and then I went on vacation. Today however, I went ahead and investigated the batteries again. A&B had 12V while C&D had 7V. As a test, I decided to rotate the batteries, moving battery C to A's spot and battery A to C's spot. B & C paired together nicely, but when I went to pair A & D together, I got sparkage. A little sparkage isn't an issue, so I held the wire on. The contact area maintained an electric glow and after a few seconds, battery D began bubbling.

Now, I then tested each battery individually and found D holding at 7V while C had 11V. I also checked the specific gravity and D shows as being "fair" with some wells being "good". I don't like the sound of bubbling battery acid in my van, so I am going to take D home and charge it with the trickle charger. Alternatively, I might just take it to the store I got it from and ask them to check it out.

In the mean time, I connected two of my good batteries in series. At least this way, I have enough power to run the inverter because it will shut off if the voltage dips below 19V and 19V is about the maximum I can get out my system with the bad battery in.

Wiring Diagram

Above is the current wiring diagram I have in the van.  I recently had issues where battery C died, dragging down the system.  I used a battery checker - a little clear plastic device with a floater in it.  Battery C showed as weak while battery D showed as good (despite only measuring 7 volts when isolated from the system).  So battery C appears to have died and dragged down battery D's charge with it.  I took battery C home, replaced the fluid with fresh distilled water, and it charged up properly to 12V.  Hopefully that means the battery is now good.

Part of me wonders though, could my wiring be to blame.  Perhaps the right side is not charging like the left side and caused battery C to fail.

More battery findings

So today had more sun and the meter was reading around 25V. I dug around and was able to pull the "quick disconnect" apart. They don't always want to disconnect, and certainly not quickly. The disconnect was the positive lead between the charge controller and the battery bank.

Immediately, the meter dropped to 22.58, which just verified that they had been getting power from the panel. I then left and came back 3 hours later. The voltage had dropped to ~20V. This confirms that at least one of the batteries is bad.

So next week, I'll bring down my battery tester (the one that measures specific gravity) and hopefully a nice funnel or water bulb (like you sue for ears) to refill the water in them.

If a battery is fully bad, they should have a multi-year warranty that I need to check out.

Gotta go, my battery is low.

So I've been noticing for a long time that my batteries seem to drain down at night. This was a minor annoyance previously, but now that there are only around 10 hours of sunlight in the day (sunrise ~7AM / sunset ~5PM), it has become a real issue as the batteries are now hovering around 20V and barely get above 22 after a full day's charge.

Now, the charge controller is supposed to have a night disconnect that prevents nighttime discharging through the solar panel. I had assumed that this was controlled by one of the potentiometers on the inside. So last week, I broke out the manual and went over all the details and found that they really only control how high it takes the voltage before it stops charging. They do not impact the low voltage disconnect. I did make a few adjustments to have it try to give more charge to the batteries. This seemed to have no affect.

So I emailed the Xantrex support people. They gave me a few troubleshooting tips, one of which is to determine if the batteries themselves are holding a charge. To test this, I would charge the batteries to full capacity (which at this point may involve taking them home), disconnecting the load and charge controller, and see if the voltage drops over a 12 hour period. If I had one, I could also try a DC clamp on ammeter to see if current is flowing to the solar panels.

I currently have no easy way to disconnect the solar panels. I have ordered two DC circuit breakers - 1 50A one for between the solar panels and the charge controller and one 100A for between the batteries and the load. Each breaker is around $25 so I will be adding $50 once I set these up.

Weather and Life

Traveling

Last week, I took my van back home to get it's yearly inspection.  Unfortunately, the garage itself was out of stickers.  They could have scheduled me again for Monday, but I of course had to work Monday.  So we have one scheduled for Thursday, which means I'll be taking the van up a second time.

Remodeling

While I did have the van at home, I took the time to do some remodeling again. I cut the bed to be shorter (my length), made the desk a bit shorter (lengthwise, not height wise), and secured the sink to the side of the desk.  All in all, this gives me much more room to move about inside the van.

I also have brought down a microwave to heat soup up with.  I am not sure how well it works.  Transporting it the first time, it fell over, hit some junk I was transporting and dented.  I put my soup in on Monday to heat it up.  It ran, but made a whiny noise.  The soup came out tepid instead of hot, like I would hope.  I'll try it again next week (I only had the one can) for a longer period.

Weather

Things have been a bit chilly this week, with freezing/frost conditions in the morning.  I was supposed to bring my heater down with the van, but left it at home.  Despite this freezing weather, my sleeping bag still remains a viable source of protection from the elements.  Also, the temperature does warm up inside the van into the high 60s by mid-day.  On Monday, i even had to open a window and roof vent to let the cooler outdoor air in.

 

Oops and soup

Things are starting to cool down, but I still find myself needing ac for a portion of the day. Today around 11, I fired up the generator and the ac.  Then, around 3:30, I was up and noticed my inverter was only reading 20 volts. Turns out I had been running off of the inverter all day. That would be fine, except I was also running the generator with no load.

At work, I have been primarily eating soup, while eating fast food during the day. So this week I purchased a thermos.  It seems to work pretty good. The soup I made at 6am is still hot and it has its own cup to pour the soup into.  My plan is to take the thermos back into work each day for cleaning and refill.