BATTERY INVESTIGATION PART 8: LOAD TESTING

After charging up the battery bank and then disconnecting the batteries I let them rest over night. I came back on board the next day and measured each battery's voltage and did two tests on each battery  using the Centech Battery Analyzer  and a 100 Amp Battery Load Tester.

Here's a quick video showing how to use the Centech Analyzer:




Here is the data I got from the Centech battery analyzer testing

                                      VOLTS   mOHM  CCA     BAT CAPACITY

BATTERY 1                   12.94      2.39      1235          100%

BATTERY 2                   12.45      2.33      1265          100%

BATTERY 3                   12.92      2.35      1241          100%

BATTERY 4 (suspect)   12.92      2.48      1179          100%

All batteries have passed the test from the analyzer. Though battery 4 (the lowest battery in the string) is certainly has a slightly diminished CCA (Cold Cranking Amps) reading compared to some of the others. But, it still passed the tests. The parasitic load from the Paktrakr that was on this battery for four years seems to have weakened it a little. It also has a slightly higher milliohm resistance reading compared to the other batteries not much more though. This might be due to some sulfation internal to the battery because of the parasitic load.

I followed the Centech battery analyzer test with the  100 Amp Battery Load Tester. All batteries passed that load test too:

Obviously, I will be keeping an eye on battery four which when I started this investigation would not even complete a charge on two separate battery chargers. After those results some might have just thrown the battery away and replaced it. But, as you can see it did manage to redeem it's self over time once the parasitic drain was removed. Why all of a sudden did I have this problem after four years? The only thing different this year is that I did not have my 48 volt Air X wind turbine also providing additional charging over the winter layup. This made the solar panels the only charging source and it may have not been enough considering the constant parascitic load on the fourth battery. I also added an additional device to monitor the charging of the battery bank. This additional load may have been enough to add additional sulfation to the suspect battery. So the lesson learned for this electric sailor is to keep parasitic loads off any one battery in the string. Another good thing from this investigation is I now have data to see how each individual battery the 48 volt propulsion bank ages from here on.

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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