[RE-wrenches] HuP Conundrum

Dana dana at solarwork.com
Wed Dec 16 12:51:52 PST 2015


Luke,

If not other option works you can replace just one or two cells.

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Dana Orzel 
Great Solar Works, Inc -  NABCEP # 051112-136
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-----Original Message-----
From: RE-wrenches [mailto:re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org] On Behalf Of Luke Christy
Sent: Wednesday, December 16, 2015 10:01 AM
To: RE-wrenches
Subject: [RE-wrenches] HuP Conundrum

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
SGSRenewables at Gmail.com
719.588.3044
www.sgsrenewables.com

   







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