Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Re: [Electric Boats] Solar Boat issue

 

Ken,

Maybe I misunderstood the situation but I THOUGHT the battery pack in question was  8 12V AGMS in parallel with 2 12V FLAs with one solar controller charging them all on a common pos. and neg. terminal. My comment was directed at the folly of this configuration.

The question for that situation is what charge profile are you going to use. If you program your charge controller for FLAs, you're going to burn up the AGMs. If you set it for AGMs, then it won't be right for the FLAs. Either way, I see nothing but problems over the long run. Plus the feedback to the controller from the battery bank is going to be wacky too, likely confusing the charge controller. 

Even when your parallel batteries have the same chemistry with identical geometries, it's tricky enough to keep them balance over the long run if your input/output is from common terminals. I just don't see this working well.

Capt. Carter
www.shipofimagination.com


On Wednesday, March 1, 2017 12:00 AM, "'Ken Cooke' ken.cooke@canewoods.com [electricboats]" <electricboats@yahoogroups.com> wrote:




Greetings, Carter,
 
I am not sure the original poster 'Tony' was talking about mixing AGM batteries with FLA batteries.
 
I know I would certainly second your warning about not doing that if he's given that indication.
 
Just curious about your "Danger" alarm here, After all, I was just talking about mixing 55 gallon rain barrels full of water with golf cart batteries in my analogy.
 
What could go wrong there?  After all, they are called <i>flooded</i> lead acid batteries aren't they?
 
Thanks,
 
Ken Cooke
Kentucky River
 
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2017 12:48 PM
Subject: Re: [Electric Boats] Solar Boat issue
 
 
Danger, Danger Will Robinson. lol

I would not parallel AGMs and FLAs without some serious battery management system going on.

You're going to burn something up and it will most likely be a bunch of expensive AGM batteries.


On Tuesday, February 28, 2017 12:42 PM, "'Ken Cooke' ken.cooke@canewoods.com [electricboats]" <electricboats@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Do you have a schematic on how you are drawing power off your batteries (Which posts) and the specifications of the % measurement displayed by your charge controller?
 
My guess is that the percentage measure is based on voltage alone, not some true measurement of amp hour discharge capacity.
 
Sometimes I've found that my system voltages will drop to 12.5 to 12.2 volts while underway with motors running full speed, then when I stop for a few minutes the voltages will stabilize back to 12.8 or even run back up to 13+ if the solar panels are still connected.  Your Chinese Charge Controller may be only getting it's reading off the same battery  your power posts are drawing from. 
 
Imagine having 8 barrels full of water, each connected so they rise and fall together through a 1" hose.
You discharge from one barrel with a four inch hose, so the water level in first barrel you are drawing from goes down to 65% while the other barrels are still full.  They will equalize eventually
 
I would pay more attention to system voltage as measured on the negative post of battery 1 and the positive post of battery 8.
 
Thanks,
 
Ken Cooke
Kentucky River
 
Sent: Monday, February 27, 2017 1:36 PM
Subject: RE: [Electric Boats] Solar Boat issue
 
 
 
I have a a solar boat with 6 (130 watt) panels, 80 amp Chinese controller, 8 (98 amp hour) batteries(parallel) and 2 (45 lb) trolling motors. At full throttle one motor draws around 35 amps. After an hour at full throttle the controller shows the batteries at only 65%. Any thoughts?

Tony
Sent from my iPad
Is it possible your controller thinks you only have 98 Amp-Hours total capacity?  (8 batteries in parallel is not a very common configuration so setting up the controller incorrectly is more likely).  35 amps being drawn for an hour would leave 65% remaining if total capacity was only around 100 Amp-Hours.  Can you tell the controller you recharged the batteries (without actually doing so) and see how much energy is really remaining?
Pat








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