More on battery management [RE-wrenches]

Windy Dankoff windydankoff at mac.com
Sun May 7 08:43:20 PDT 2006


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Joel, Kelly,

The manual you refer to is written from the conventional assumption  
of 27/7 utility-supplied power to charge batteries. It is typical of  
the advice also given by battery manufacturers who are not  
specifically oriented to RE. Stand-alone RE charging requires  
different timing and voltage strategies.  Anyone who deals with  
batteries should have this manual (and similar information), but  
should understand that it does not fully address our situations.

We push the charging faster, in order to "get it while we can". Many  
flooded battery installations suffer from max. voltage set-points of  
about 14.2V because that's what the battery manufacturer recommended.  
That's fine when you have full charge power from a wall socket and  
can take a few extra hours to gently charge the batteries. In an RE  
system it must be 14.7 or 14.8V, or else the charge current is  
tapering off, and the battery is not fully absorbing the last hours  
of available sunlight. Or, it is  not charging as much as possible  
before the generator is turned off for the sake of peace and quiet or  
economy.

We push battery charging beyond the conventional comfort level that  
is optimum in a utility-charging scheme. This is a compromise, but it  
is MUCH more desirable than attaining a 75% charge by wasting  
precious solar power, on a day that it could have been pushed to 95%  
by delaying the voltage regulation.

Windy

> From: "Joel  Davidson" <joeldavidson at earthlink.net>
>
> Hello Kelly,
> The Battery Council International's Battery Service Manual is a  
> good info
> source. Available at
> http://www.batterycouncil.org/BCIServiceManualForm02.pdf or for  
> free from
> many battery suppliers.
> Joel Davidson


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