Hi Friends, With all of the battery threads going on right now I figured it would be a good time to start another one.
I have a customer with a large off-grid system who has just started having trouble with a bank of HuP batteries. This system is 48V with 8x 12V 6-85F-27S batteries in two series strings. Charging is supplied by around 10 kW of PV. I didn't install the system and the customer has always taken care of the maintenance and watering himself. He has seemingly been pretty diligent about taking care of things, including equalizing on a regular basis. However, recently he started having voltage problems and when I made a site visit to check on the batteries, I found that 3 of the 8x 12V batteries each had a cell with SG so low it wouldn't register on my hydrometer. Obviously this is a problem, and owing to some complicating factors I'm not really sure how best to address the issue. Replacing the entire battery bank will be unbelievably expensive, especially given that the house is in a remote location and there is difficult access to the battery room. To add a another factor, the house is currently unoccupied while the owner tries to sell the property, so he is not exactly eager to invest a lot of money into battery replacement. The batteries are only 11 years old, so they should theoretically have quite a bit of life left in them. Perhaps those of you with more experience with larger batteries can advise. Can the cells be resurrected with careful charging and equalizing? What would you do? Thanks as always for opinions and advice. Luke Christy NABCEP Certified PV Installation Professional™: Certification #031409-25 NABCEP Certified Solar Heating Installer™: Certification #ST032611-03 Solar Gain Services, LLC PO Box 531 Monte Vista, CO. 81144 sgsrenewab...@gmail.com 719.588.3044 www.sgsrenewables.com _______________________________________________ List sponsored by Redwood Alliance List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change listserver email address & settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/re-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org/maillist.html List rules & etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out or update participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org
