CHARGING ON THE WIND

Finally got back on the boat Memorial Day after a month away. Beautiful day somewhat cool and windy. My 48 Volt Marine Air X turbine was spinning away charging the batteries. As I sat there I was waiting to see it stop as it usually does on sunny days such as this because the solar panels manage to keep things charged up. In fact The 48 volt Air X is usually stopped much of the day as the solar panels do most of the charging. But, for some reason it was spinning longer than usual,  When I went into BIANKA's cabin I soon found out the reason.

What happened was the  Morningstar ProStar PS-15M-48V, 15 Amp 48 Volt Charge Controller was still in over voltage disconnect mode and had not been charging the battery bank for the last month. A month ago I used the Dual Pro 4 Bank Charger to top off and balance the four 8A4D batteries using grid power. The voltage applied to the battery bank by the charger can reach 62 volts at some point in the charge cycle. The Morningstar controller senses this as an over voltage condition and disconnects the solar panels from the battery. It's a safety feature of the controller. I just need to hit the reset button on the Morningstar controller after the Dual Pro finishes it's charge and it starts charging normally. Apparently, I forgot to do this the last time before I left the boat so the only charging of the propulsion bank for the past month was from the Marine Air X turbine. Not a problem when one has multiple ways to charge the battery bank. Nice to know the boat is always fueled up with energy even if one of the systems is accidentally disconnected. This sailor always likes to have a backup. With electric propulsion it's easy to have multiple backups for charging.

BATTERY INVESTIGATION PART 7: Much better balance

Well, it's been another two weeks since I was on board looking at the issue with the last battery in the string. When I last was on the boat I had charged up the bank fully and removed the Paktraker battery monitor which had been taking it's power from the suspect low battery. So for two weeks only the solar panels had been keeping the bank topped up and there were no parasitic loads off of any individual battery. When I powered up the Dual Pro PS4 battery charger this is what happened:



As you can see within a few seconds all four batteries immediately jumped up into the 90 to 100% range. This seems to indicate that all the batteries are pretty close in balance to one another.  It certainly is much improved situation  from the last time I fired up the charger which you can see here:



This time after an hour of charging all the batteries were fully charged within seconds of each other. The bank has come along way since I first discovered that the low battery in the bank was not able to accept a full charge.   I'm glad I took the time to investigate the reason for that battery's failure to charge fully. It seems to be related to the Paktraker's parasitic load off the suspect battery. Since I removed it from the battery there has been much improvement. The suspect battery has gradually over several weeks has come to be comparable charge wise to the other batteries in the bank. Now it is on par with the other three batteries in terms of charging.  The only thing left to do is to do one final charge and let the bank rest and then load test each battery.  I'll be doing that very shortly.

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BATTERY INVESTIGATION PART SIX:

So after my trip to the beach I was back on board taking advantage of the mild weather to continue to look at the battery charging issue with the fourth battery. For two weeks the 48 volt battery string has been charging via the solar panels and the Paktrakr load has been disconnected off of the fourth battery. There was a little surprise when I plugged in the Dual Pro charger. It showed the second battery to be a little down chargewise compared to batteries one and three:



I've seen this before you never know which battery may be slightly down when you plug in the charger as they all do not come up the same way everytime. But, my concern is with the fourth battery in the string which earlier in this investigation was not even able to achieve a full charge. It is now behaving more like the other three.  Twenty minutes later and this what I saw on the Dual Pro display:



One hour later and the first and third batteries were now fully charged and the second and fourth batteries were still somewhere in the 90 to 99% range:



Finally after about one hour and twenty minutes all four batteries were fully charged:



I once again took some voltage readings of each battery after they were fully charged:


                   VOLTS
1                  13.7
2                  13.8
3                  13.4
4 (suspect)   13.3

These latest reading shows all four batteries even more in balance than when previously tested. Which leads me to believe that keeping the load from the Paktrakr off of battery four is beneficial in keeping it in balance with the other three batteries. I think I'll will do one more charge test in the near future and then conduct a load test on each battery before I fully can say that all batteries are ready for BIANKA's fifth season under electric propulsion. However things are looking more promising that they are.

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BATTERY INVESTIGATION PART FIVE: Some Good News!

It's been about two weeks since I last looked at the battery issue concerning the most negative battery in the 48 volt propulsion string on BIANKA. The battery passed the Centech Battery Analyzer and load tests but, would not fully charge using the on board and an external battery charger. I suspected that the parasitic loads on the battery by the Paktrakr battery monitor (which draws it's operating power from that battery) might be the cause of the problem. So two weeks ago before I left the boat I disconnected the Paktrakr from the battery and just left the solar panels and ProStar PS-15M-48V Morningstar Charge Controller
 to keep charging the battery in the mean time. I went back on board recently and fired up the Dual Pro Professional Series PS4 4 Bank 15 Amp Battery Charger and got some good news:



So after about two weeks without the parasitic drain from the Paktrakr the suspect battery's charging has improved. Three minutes later after plugging in the Dual Pro charger I got even better news:



The flashing green lights mean that the Dual Pro considers the battery to be somewhere between 90 and 99% charged. This was a big improvement since the last time I tried to charge the suspect battery. So it seems that over time the Paktrakr's parasitic load was affecting the charging ability of the fourth battery in the 48 volt string. I continued to let the bank charge with the Dual Pro charger and an hour later I got even better news as shown below:



The suspect battery now accepts a full charge according to the Dual Pro charger. Which was a big improvement over the previous times I tried to charge it. So I kept the Paktrakr disconnected from the battery and let the solar panels and Morningstar controller keep things charged up in the meantime. Voltage readings on the suspect battery are still lower than the other three batteries in the bank as shown in the following table  :
                                        VOLTS
BATTERY 1                      15.1
BATTERY 2                      14.7
BATTERY 3                      14.9
BATTERY 4 (SUSPECT)  13.2
(Note: Readings were taken shortly after batteries got to a full charge on the Dual Pro charger)

I'm hoping that will change as I continue the investigation further. The fact that the battery has improved in it's ability to get to a fully charged condition gives me hope that things will continue to move in a positive direction.

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BATTERY INVESTIGATION PART 2: MORE BATTERY TROUBLE SHOOTING OF A 48 VOLT STRING

I used a warm weather window to go back on board and see if I could figure out why the most negative battery in the 48 volt EP string was not charging like the other three. When I left it's voltage had not risen past 12.9 volts. So when I got back on board I plugged in the Dual Pro charger and lo and behold the indicator light went almost immediately up to 90% and the voltage was reading 13.5 volts.

This was a good sign because when I left it a few days ago only two of the red Leds were lit showing it 30% charged. As you can see in the photo above the other three batteries in the string are near 100% charged. Don't know what changed in the two days since I was last on board (Though I did unpower the Paktrakr Battery monitor which does take it's power from the lowest battery before I left last time.) but, things were moving in a positive direction. I thought now that the battery bank was up near  90% charged as shown on the Dual Pro display. It would be just a little while before it was charged up near the other three. So I took a nap.
When I got up about an hour later things were still showing 90% but, then a while later the LED display showed the charge only at 70%. Now things were going in a negative direction and the puzzle continues. It was getting late and colder so I hooked up the Paktrakr battery monitor again and left the boat while I pondered what was going on:

1) I still may have a connection issue with the battery bank though I did clean the battery connections on the last visit. I'll clean them again on my next visit.

2) I'm wondering if the load of the Paktrakr is the cause of the problem. The load from the basic Paktrkr is 10 ma. Though I just recently added the ESR-1 data cable which has some data storage capabilities in it. Though I find it hard to believe the current draw could be that great to cause the battery to start to fail. But, it is the only new item added into the mix.

Soon as the temperatures warm up again I'll head back to do some more investigation. Something about hanging around a couple of hundred pounds of lead on a chilly day makes it not the most warming experience.

LINKS

BATTERY INVESTIGATION PART 1
BATTERY INVESTIGATION PART 3