Jay, I saw that comment also. The more hardened lead sulfate becomes, the more resistant the battery is to the electrochemical process and therefore less current is drawn from the charge source. This decrease of load allows the charge voltage to rise more rapidly. This rapid rise is usually a first indicator of sulfated batteries. A healthy battery, charged at the proper rate, will always have a gradual, linear rise in voltage.
Just FYI, I am a hands on guy and my experience with servicing batteries is somewhat unique to our wrench group having designed, installed and serviced many hundreds of battery systems. Lead sulfation and it's cause and prevention has been an interest of mine because it is so prevalent. Larry On Jul 23, 2013, at 9:32 PM, jay peltz <j...@asis.com> wrote: Hi Eric, While agree with most all your assessments, Can you please elaborate on the "sulfation causes the voltage not to climb?" This is quite counter to what I have seen and what the battery people say? Thanks Jay Peltz power Sent from my iPad On Jul 23, 2013, at 2:48 PM, eric.bent...@schneider-electric.com wrote: > > Hi William, > > If the SG was 1.26, of course the battery voltage would increase > quickly to >30V (which is high for warm weather, BTW). > It has been my experience that sulfation causes the voltage NOT to climb. > Especially when you have a very large bank, and a > relatively small amount of solar. > Sometimes it is necessary to reduce the bank size into smaller sets to > equalize them and recover their performance. > This method of reducing bank size is also effective to compare performance > and weed out a potentially bad battery. > Systems that have a lot of capacity, with a relatively small amount of > charge current usually creates problems, because > the load demand exceeds solar production. > This results in batteries that operate with partial SOC, which is when > sulfation is most prevalent. With (8) L16s, you have approx > 800Ahrs of capacity (24V bank). It would take significantly more than 8A of > charge current to properly care for a bank that size. > > Rgds, > _____________________________________________________________________________________ > > > Eric Bentsen | Schneider Electric | Solar Business | UNITED STATES > | Technical Support Representative > Phone: +(650) 351-8237 ext. 001# | > Email: eric.bent...@schneider-electric.com | Site: > www.schneider-electric.com/solar | Address: 250 South Vasco Rd., > Livermore, CA 94551 > > _______________________________________________ List sponsored by Home Power magazine List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change email address & settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List rules & etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org
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