Thought I'd give a little report to go along with the recent charging discussions. I recently finished a 150 mile cruise with my electric sailboat. It's my third season and I installed a 48 volt Dual Pro charger this year in addition to the originally installed 48 volt Zivan NG-1 charger. I did this to see if using the Dual Pro with it's four individual chargers would balance the battery bank better.as Hans mentioned. My observations:
1) I think using the Dual Pro has helped in keepimg the pack better balanced. At least when looking at the pack the one battery I was concerned about is at or above the others give or take a few hundred millivolts.
2) That said It seems to me that the Dual Pro takes a long time to charge when using my Honda 2000. It is supposed to be able to charge at 15 amps per battery. But, since I can't monitor the current of the Dual Pro legs I'm kind of guessing on this. The Zivan NG-1 current which I can read on my XBM battery monitor is about 16 amps provided in series to the bank. I suspect this might be a current limitation of the Honda. I also operate it Eco mode. Comments?
Because of this I tried using the Honda with the Zivan to get through the initial bulk charge before switching to the Dual Pro. This seems to work pretty well. When the Dual Pro shows all four batteries at 90% or greater (blinking green) I usually let the solar and wind finish things off. I welcome any comments or suggestions for further testing.
Sent from on board BIANKA
http://biankablog.blogspot.com
From: Hans Kloepfer <hanskloepfer@yahoo.com>
Sender: electricboats@yahoogroups.com
Date: Tue, 06 Jul 2010 13:30:14 -0700 (PDT)
To: <electricboats@yahoogroups.com>
ReplyTo: electricboats@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Electric Boats] Re: charging troubles solved (Not so much)
For what it is worth. I just found I had a bad battery. I use the 48v kipoint with agm batteries. I never felt very good about this set up. I wish I would have invested in a charger like the promariner with the individual 12v charging modules.
With my 134ah 48v bank I had significant power loss after consuming about 40aH. Upon measuring individual batteries I found the number 2 battery in the string to be down to 9.5V whereas the other three batteries in the string were all at about 12.4 to 12.5 volts. This could be a result of the punishing effects of series charging on the weak battery in the string.
Hans
I
--- On Tue, 7/6/10, aweekdaysailor <aweekdaysailor@yahoo.com> wrote:
From: aweekdaysailor <aweekdaysailor@yahoo.com>
Subject: [Electric Boats] Re: charging troubles solved
To: electricboats@yahoogroups.com
Date: Tuesday, July 6, 2010, 12:52 PM
David, I think there is a typo where you meant you adjusted the charger to 63.6V (=2.65/cell). And to summarize - I think you are saying that the Kipoint is just doing 2 step charging - first 2.45V/cell (59V) and then dropping to float.
This is useful information. I was also seeing some early battery failure with the Kipoint - luckily my WalMart strategy continues to pay off (trade in old batteries just before the warranty expires...)
Hans also has a Kipoint, but is using AGM batteries if I recall - so maybe he can comment on how that is working out.
I have switched back to ProMariner (20amp, distributed to 2 banks X 2). Individually charging the batteries seems a better strategy long-term given how the weak battery will always get punished trying to charge @48V
-Keith
--- In electricboats@yahoogroups.com, "davidchristiansen60" <dc@...> wrote:
>
> Found the problem why my 48V 120Ah open lead acid pack wasn't charged properly. Open LA semi traction batteries need 2,65V per cell for the last part of the charge. First step constant current up to 2,45V, then next step max 3,5A to the 2,65V, last step float charge at reduced voltage.
> So with the KIPOINT 48V20A charger stopping at 59V the batteries were never fully charged, and they sulphated! The KIPOINT charger is not a real automatic 3 point charger. After reaching the 59V it went directly into float mode. After shifting a zener diode (instructed by the factory) the top voltage could be adjusted to 53,6V BUT: depending of the float point adjusting potmeter it then either 1) went on charging with constant 53,6V at about 10Amps!!! without stopping, or 2) went directly into float charge mode.
> Analysing the circuitry it turned out the device is more a power supply than an automatic charger. Only regulating IC is an OpAmp. The other 2 IC's are switch mode controllers.
> The KIPOINT charger is maybe OK for SLA type batteries, where the voltage may suffice, but I found no real 2. charging step in the device.
>
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