I would add to the chorus that it probably is a battery issue. Here are
the symptoms that lead to that conclusion:
A) it started occurring recently,
B) it is somewhat intermittent,
C) the system has aging L 16s (failures at 4 to 5 years are pretty common)
D) they are the Trojan RE series (dead cells at less than 2 years has
been documented several times on this list)
E) the customer is trying to equalize regularly. (which causes over
heating, and accelerates cell failures)
Besides checking battery voltages, an infared camera can quickly show
over heating, bad cells. Also, I would advise the customer to only
equalize when the batteries are unequal, based on specific gravity readings.
Ray Walters
Remote Solar
303 505-8760
On 4/28/20 12:20 PM, Dave Tedeyan wrote:
Steve and Jerry,
Thanks for the suggestions. I'll have to take a closer look at the
battery bank next time I am out there.
The solar setup is 4 strings of 3 kyocera 270's into each charge
controller. So that is almost 65A @50V coming out of each charge
controller for bulk. The parallel battery strings all have the same
length of premade cable, so current should be balanced (unless there
is a dead cell or two in there...).
Cheers,
Dave
*Dave Tedeyan, PE*
Senior Engineer | Taitem Engineering, PC
110 South Albany Street | Ithaca, NY 14850
o. _607.277.1118 x121_ f. 607.277.2119
www.taitem.com <http://www.taitem.com>
Solar •Sustainability • Energy • Design
Certified B-Corporation since 2013
On Tue, Apr 28, 2020 at 11:52 AM Jerry Shafer
<jerrysgarag...@gmail.com <mailto:jerrysgarag...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Sounds like a battery issue at first glance, as you EQ a battery
it gets warm or even hot and this will effect ability to charge.
If e en one of the L-16 is not exactly the same voltage you will
not get to EQ untill another battery over voltages to show your
overall volts. Need to look at each battery volts under this
charge condition. Also if you have a battery acting up be very
careful working around them.
Jerry
On Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 6:50 AM Dave Tedeyan <dtede...@taitem.com
<mailto:dtede...@taitem.com>> wrote:
Hi All,
I've got an outback system (Radian 8048A, 2 FM80, 16 Trojan
L16RE-B) where when the customer equalizes, the batteries
hover right around the EQ voltage, but will often dip to 0.1v
less. Because of this, the EQ timer does not count down
properly, and so left to its own devices the system would
equalize for way longer than it should, potentially forever.
This will happen when doing an EQ from the solar on a bright
sunny day, or the generator, or both. The customer can
manually keep track of the time and manually stop the EQ after
3 hours, but that is not ideal. Has anyone dealt with this
before and have any suggestions on how they fixed it?
This system is 3-4 years old, and the issue only started in
the past year or so.
Cheers,
Dave
*Dave Tedeyan, PE*
Senior Engineer | Taitem Engineering, PC
110 South Albany Street | Ithaca, NY 14850
o. _607.277.1118 x121_ f. 607.277.2119
www.taitem.com <http://www.taitem.com>
Solar •Sustainability • Energy • Design
Certified B-Corporation since 2013
_______________________________________________
List sponsored by Redwood Alliance
List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org
<mailto: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
<http://www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm>
Check out or update participant bios:
www.members.re-wrenches.org <http://www.members.re-wrenches.org>
_______________________________________________
List sponsored by Redwood Alliance
List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org
<mailto: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
<http://www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm>
Check out or update participant bios:
www.members.re-wrenches.org <http://www.members.re-wrenches.org>
_______________________________________________
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
_______________________________________________
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
