I forgot to mention that an infared camera is a great way to find poor connections. Its a proven method on commercial panels, and I think it would work great for battery cabling too. Just put the system under full load for a few minutes, and the hot connections would show up quick. (of course just pulling them all off, cleaning them, and checking them by hand has always worked....)
R. Walters r...@solarray.com Solar Engineer On Jan 7, 2011, at 10:01 AM, <d...@foxfire-energy.com> <d...@foxfire-energy.com> wrote: > > Hey Everyone... got another one of those "Funny Questions" I'm struggling > with... Seems I have an off grid customer researching battery issues.. and > trying to gather a consensus among vendors.. fair enough... currently they > have 4 strings of 5+ yr old L16 (not my design) that are starting to fail > (no surprises there).. I'm trying to get them into a one or two string > design.. Seems they've been in contact with a "Battery Specialist" (who > previously sold them a couple dozen or so desulphators... which has not > appeared to have significantly affected the lifespan of the bank).. Seems he > also "Discovered" that they would need new cables because he measured up to > 2/100 of a volt drop across some of the connections -- some at the terminal / > flag connections... others from the swedged terminal to the cable... seems he > also outright failed a couple of 16" chunks of 2/0 interconnection cables > because of "voltage drops" in the cables themselves... I've checked around a > little.. I'm told BMI suggests a max .2 volt drop under full load between > battery and starter terminal, and 1.2 Volt drop thru the entire starter > control circuit... I'm at a loss here folks... working on my diplomacy.. > I'm curious if anyone has hard and fast experience with using voltage drop to > evaluate battery interconnections.. and if so, what might the voltage drops > be... thanks all.. db > > Dan Brown > Foxfire Energy Corp. > Renewable Energy Systems > (802)-483-2564 > www.Foxfire-Energy.com > NABCEP #092907-44 > > _______________________________________________ > List sponsored by Home Power magazine > > List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org > > Options & settings: > http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org > > List-Archive: > http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org > > List rules & etiquette: > www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm > > Check out participant bios: > www.members.re-wrenches.org >
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