[RE-wrenches] Lead acid batteries taking too much current

[Steve Higgins]

Dave,

I need to give you a call... I need to make a new video with some changes.

As for the generator starting but not stopping it's a mix between the
battery resistance and the SOC percentages... are you using voltages to
start/stop or SOC%

I'll give you a call in a few mins to discuss further.

On Fri, Oct 4, 2024, 7:30 AM Dave Tedeyan via RE-wrenches <
re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org> wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I have inherited and done some work on an off-grid system with a Sol-Ark
> 8k inverter and now has a new set of 16 Rolls S6 L16-HC batteries (only
> about a month old). There is only 3.9kw of solar, and there is a 12kw
> generator.
>
> First of all, thanks to Steve for putting out that webinar a little while
> ago on how to program a Sol-Ark with lead acid batteries! I followed that
> for the programming of this inverter.
>
> Recently, the generator kicked on when it should. But it never turned
> itself off. I had to go into the battery settings and turn off grid and gen
> charging to get the generator to turn off. From looking at the monitoring,
> even once the batteries were full, they were still accepting over 40A of
> current. A few hours later, the batteries were accepting almost 50A of
> current.
>
> The battery bank has a capacity of 890AH, but based on the FLA
> recommendations I set the capacity to 70% of that, or 650AH so that it
> absorbs longer. Based on the Sol-Ark programming, it will run the generator
> until the batteries are accepting 5% of that, or 32.5A. It seems that since
> the system never got down to that little amount of current, it never turned
> off the generator and never stopped charging. I had the customer check the
> water level and they said it was low, but not below the level of the
> plates.
>
> Does anyone know why the batteries might have been accepting so much
> current even when fully charged? And in order to get the final amps that
> the inverter is looking for to turn off the generator, I would need to set
> the capacity up to about 780AH or about 90% of the rated capacity. Is
> upping the capacity the recommended action to prevent this from happening
> in the future?
>
> I also have a follow up question. Being that there is not a ton of solar
> here, the recommendation for a full absorb every few days ends up being
> about 7 hours of absorb time. I am wondering if there is a way to force the
> inverter to do an EQ cycle (although we are really just using the EQ
> function on the inverter to get a full absorb cycle every few days) when we
> know it will be a sunny day? I would also like to be able to start an EQ
> cycle and also start the generator to give a good top off. It seems that
> you can choose the EQ frequency, but you don't know exactly when it will
> try to EQ.
>
> Thanks in advance!
> Cheers,
> Dave
> --
>
> [image: Logo] <https://www.sungineersolar.com/>
> Dave Tedeyan, P.E.
> Owner | Sungineer Solar
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