Saturday, November 4, 2017

Re: [Electric Boats] Re: Battery monitor idea

 

If I am not mistaken the idea is to leave all the elements of the bus connected in the circuit and sense a midpoint in all series branches. For example if a cell in the lower part of a given branch has shorted, the midpoint will sag about 10% to about 4/10 of the bus voltage instead of half (ie 5/10) of the bus voltage. Once the branch with a defective cell is determined automatically by periodic polling of voltages on the points marked with X  with respect to ground and an alarm is activated, the operator could cut out the defective branch quickly before cells get overcharged and find the defective cell by measuring each cell in the branch manually and maybe repair the defective cell if possible. Very clever and practical idea.
Maybe a pair of 100k resistors in series with a 22k in the middle sets about +/- 5% window for the center point of the bus and each measurement of the points marked with X is compared to this window? Maybe connect a heavy load on one cell and measure the midpoint voltage to test the system and/or determine  the optimum window. Too narrow a window is likely to results in false alarms and too wide a window will miss a failure. I would appreciate if Mark shared his findings after the project is finished. 
Cheers
Ahmet

    GND  |--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|   +12V NOM
               |               X                |
               |--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|  
               |               X                |
               |--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|  
               |               X                |
               |--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|  
               |               X                |
               |--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|  
               |               X                |
               |--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|  
               |               X                |
               |--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|  
               |               X                |
               |--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|  
               |               X                |


From: "boat_works@yahoo.com [electricboats]" <electricboats@yahoogroups.com>
To: electricboats@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, November 3, 2017 10:37 PM
Subject: [Electric Boats] Re: Battery monitor idea

 
Maybe I'm missing something here, but since you'll need to isolate the parallel connections to be able to check voltage on an individual series string, do you have an easy way to do that? Plug-in jumpers, maybe? Otherwise monitoring would seem pretty tedious....

-Tom


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[Electric Boats] Re: Battery monitor idea

 


Hi Mark,

Re battery monitor, this might interest you running on Raspberry Pi:

https://www.victronenergy.com/blog/2017/09/06/raspberry-pi-running-victrons-venus-firmware/

A bit about the guy that ported it:

https://www.victronenergy.com/blog/2017/09/06/raspberry-pi-running-victrons-venus-firmware/

It's open source and the firmware is called Venus which I run on Victron's Color Control GX on my Lithium powered electric yacht,
( https://www.facebook.com/ElektraYachts/ )
hooked up via a 4G router to their free VRM (Victron Remote Management) portal. I can then monitor locally on the boat via the LAN or over the net. Can switch chargers on/off too. Here's a basic guest link to my VRM site:

https://vrm.victronenergy.com/installation/5209/share/584fe721

Another open source project is:

https://openenergymonitor.org/

John

Sent from my iPhone

http://John.Rushworth.com

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Friday, November 3, 2017

[Electric Boats] Re: Battery monitor idea

 

Maybe I'm missing something here, but since you'll need to isolate the parallel connections to be able to check voltage on an individual series string, do you have an easy way to do that? Plug-in jumpers, maybe? Otherwise monitoring would seem pretty tedious....

-Tom

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Posted by: boat_works@yahoo.com
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Re: [Electric Boats] Solar Catamaran Videos

 

That is one of the problems with boating: if you are sailing on the boat it takes some effort to find someone to take pictures of it.

Cheers,

Rob Kay
Secretary
Electric Boat Association
104 Stirling Rd, Kilsyth,
G65 0HY
http://www.eboat.org.uk



Home:
Mobile: 0792 2692493
Landline and ansaphone: 01236 823129

On 29 October 2017 at 14:31, Carter Quillen twowheelinguy@yahoo.com [electricboats] <electricboats@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
 

I was curious to learn more about your boat and went to your youtube channel and viewed about 10 different videos but never could hardly find any picture of the BOAT. I was hoping to see interior and exterior pictures of the vessel itself but could hardly find anything beyond the control console, a solar panel on the horizon, and the helm from the companion way.  Also did a fairly extensive search of your face book and patreon pages and could not find ANY pictures of the BOAT itself from different angles. . 

I'm sure they are there somewhere but I couldn't find them. Your presentation would be a lot more compelling if you had more details about the ve ssel itself front and center. As a long time solar cruiser with an extensive blog and a website I can tell you from experience that we get the most traffic and downloads on our sites from picture of the boat and it's inner workings. People seem much more interested in learning about the vessel itself than our travels.

Could you provide a direct link to where you have hidden the details about your BOAT?  Both exterior and interior pictures would be interesting to me but I could not find any and got tired of looking. 

Capt. Carter
www.archemedesproject.blogspot.com


On Saturday, October 28, 2017 11:58 PM, "albert682@yahoo.com [electricboats]" <electricboats@yahoogroups.com> wrote:




So I have decided to release publicly all the videos from our summer electric cruise in the Pacific North West.  If your so inclined to watch you can follow along on my Facebook page for the correct chronological order or from my Youtube channel.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6BAWH7F1cixqeoS1XlLYww/videos

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001232554568

It should take some time to post them all.  They are all uploaded already I just have to sort though them as I go make obvious edits and add descriptions and titles to the videos.  You don't want to get behind on this electric cruise video series as we cover much of our time with over some 20 plus da ys with videos while we are underway.

It is the closest thing to actually being there.  Some videos you might find exciting and some perhaps as downright boring and quiet as electric boating videos should be.  Tune in and share in the experience on this one of a kind solar catamaran.






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Posted by: Rob <rob@paperclip.org.uk>
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Thursday, November 2, 2017

Re: [Electric Boats] Re: Battery monitor idea

 

Mark S

They are basically the same cells.
I have removed them from a Ford escape hybrid battery pack.
The ford uses them in 5 cell modules(6 volts nominal).
The Insight uses them in a 6 cell modules

Quite modular.
I hope to use an arduino to monitor and report voltage and diference between series modules.
maybe have it set an led if the difference meets a certain range.
I will also connect a thermister to monitor temp.

I hope this will provide a reference of battery health and watch for degredation.

So far these cells are pretty fault tollerant.



From: "mstafford@natca.net [electricboats]" <electricboats@yahoogroups.com>
To: electricboats@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, November 2, 2017 7:46 PM
Subject: [Electric Boats] Re: Battery monitor idea

 
Mark F.,
Your intent is similar to my 2000 Honda Insight with 370K miles and still its first traction battery pack of NiMH cells. So there is evidence of longevity in your plan.
NiMH cells are sometimes even helped by over- and under-charging, "top" balancing and "bottom" balancing. Most Lithium tech batteries rapidly chemically degrade internally with either high or low voltages. NiMH are different; they tolerate long gentle (less than 300mA for more than 3 days) overcharges, as long as they don't build up heat. This makes packs easy to top balance (a "grid charger" in Insight-speak). Some Insight owners even rejuvenate their traction battery packs with intentional sequential high-low-high-low.... cycles bursting to 30 Amps ("pack wacker").
Old Insights use just 3 temp/voltage probe taps on their 175Voc series packs, or one tap every 10 or 15 cells (I forget nominal voltage and cell count).
Just know your plan is not perfect, but could help identify weaker strings of cells.
Mark S.


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Posted by: Mark F <mark.internet@yahoo.ca>
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[Electric Boats] Re: Battery monitor idea

 

Mark F.,

Your intent is similar to my 2000 Honda Insight with 370K miles and still its first traction battery pack of NiMH cells. So there is evidence of longevity in your plan.
NiMH cells are sometimes even helped by over- and under-charging, "top" balancing and "bottom" balancing. Most Lithium tech batteries rapidly chemically degrade internally with either high or low voltages. NiMH are different; they tolerate long gentle (less than 300mA for more than 3 days) overcharges, as long as they don't build up heat. This makes packs easy to top balance (a "grid charger" in Insight-speak). Some Insight owners even rejuvenate their traction battery packs with intentional sequential high-low-high-low.... cycles bursting to 30 Amps ("pack wacker").
Old Insights use just 3 temp/voltage probe taps on their 175Voc series packs, or one tap every 10 or 15 cells (I forget nominal voltage and cell count).
Just know your plan is not perfect, but could help identify weaker strings of cells.
Mark S.

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Posted by: mstafford@natca.net
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[Electric Boats] Battery monitor idea

 

Hi
I am trying to determine if this would be a good battery monitor idea.
I just want to monitor, not BMS my considered battery pack.
I plan to use 8 serial strings of 10 NIMH batteries configued as parallel.
I am thinking of monitoring a point on each series leg and see if they all stay balanced(voltage reading)

I hope my diagram makes sense.
x is the monitoring points, one for each series leg.
|--|  would be a battery

My idea is that if one leg has a weak cell, the voltage will fluctuate at a point on the leg.
Then I could manually charge to balance, or replace that leg if need be.

any ideas would be great.


     GND  |--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|   +12V NOM
               |           X                    |
               |--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|  
               |           X                    |
               |--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|  
               |           X                    |
               |--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|  
               |           X                    |
               |--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|  
               |           X                    |
               |--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|  
               |           X                    |
               |--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|  
               |           X                    |
               |--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|  
               |           X                    |
  

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Posted by: Mark F <mark.internet@yahoo.ca>
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