[RE-wrenches] Outback EQ not holding voltage

[Ray]

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 
> <jerrysgarage01 at gmail.com <mailto:jerrysgarage01 at 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 <dtedeyan at taitem.com
>     <mailto:dtedeyan at 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
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