Sunday, May 23, 2010

A QUESTION OF BALANCE

I'm not talking about the Moody Blues album of the same name. Arguably one of the better Moody Blues albums after Days of Future Passed which is in BIANKA'S on board CD collection. 

No, I'm talking about battery balance.
 I noticed over the winter that one of the four batteries in the 48 volt battery bank was lagging a little behind in voltage compared to the other batteries when charging. Not by a lot but, enough that my Paktrakr battery monitor was issuing warnings about overcharging of the other batteries and undercharging of the lagging battery. This is a problem when you have multiple batteries in series  in a say  a 48 volt bank like I do for the electric propulsion system. The one undercharged battery can drag down the others. Because my ZIVAN NG-1 charges the bank as a whole it does not know that one of the batteries is lagging behind it just keeps charging until it's voltage and current parameters are met. How to correct this situation?  I've ordered a DUAL PRO PS-4 battery charger.


This charger unlike the ZIVAN NG-1 has four individual battery chargers built in to it. Each  is connected to the individual batteries in the string. So if one of the battery reaches full charge it stops charging that particular battery. Likewise if one battery takes longer to charge it keeps charging that battery and stops charging the others.  This should help to balance the battery bank or at least prevent overcharging of the batteries that are not lagging. Also having the DUAL PRO on board will provide a backup battery charger and backups are a good thing when cruising.

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