OH NO! Why is Cell 23 completely discharged?!

[@twocvbloke]

Doing better than my solar setup, my salvaged car battery from I think 2017-ish finally died last month, I just haven't gotten round to replacing it yet... :P

[@FFcossag]

That's an impressively long time for a car battery to live in a solar setup, though! Those poor thin plates must have turned to dust.

[@twocvbloke]

Given the way the battery is behaving now, I'm not sure if there's any plates left, charged from 2x20w panels through an alleged MPPT controller and powering an LED power meter (amps & volts) and a 4w LED lightbulb, and it can't even do that, but still, the battery was free, so, all's not lost... :D

[@OffGridAussiePrepper]

@@FFcossag lol @ dust, probably chinese crap too.

[@tigerelectronics5966]

Holy crap, you got 4 years out of a starting battery?! That's VERY impressive indeed. Back in my childhood days I used starting batteries with solar panels too, they died after just a few weeks lol. Those thin plates just shed and short one cell and then the whole battery is trashed 😂

[@H4zuZazu]

I think thats why they got in big Battery UPS, battery balancer/equilizers. Even though Lead Cells are robust, sometimes they behave like Lithium.

[@FFcossag]

Big UPSes tend to never even have that, it's crazy. I think lead-acids have potential to last much longer if actual per-cell balancing is applied, as with lithiums.

[@H4zuZazu]

@@FFcossag I've seen Devices for that use case if you a big Facility then Money isnt a problem and changing on a mandatory bases the Cells. I got at work a similar problem, I got there a UPS for emergency Light it uses a Series of 18 - 12V Batteries, after 3 yrs a third of them drifts so much that in Voltage that they never reache the designed uptime.

[@HomelabExtreme]

@@FFcossag I have an APC UPS with 192 cells (YES, cells!) in series with a single center tap for balancing, it is amazing that it could ever work in any degree.

[@FFcossag]

I know, those are awful, and usually the center tap doesn't even *do* any balancing - it's just monitoring.

[@tigerelectronics5966]

Wow! That's some pretty significant positive plate growth indeed, I've never seen it push the terminals upwards before. I'm excited to see how my new 6V monoblocks perform once we finally get some sun over here in Sweden, also waiting for my energy meters to arrive from Banggood or whatever it was called lol It may be a good idea to deliberetely overcharge them ever now and then to balance the cells, but water consumption and gassing will become pretty severe with the size of battery bank you have. Installing a balancer onto the bank might be a interesting long term experiment, to see if it helps with longevity of the cells!

[@FFcossag]

Sun? In Sweden? You're waiting a long time for that ;) There's no such thing as "water consumption" with gel cells, there is only electrolyte loss. That's why you need to be really careful with how you charge them, since continuous gassing will kill them permanently.

[@tigerelectronics5966]

@@FFcossag:P I'll have to wait for a few months, lol ah yeah, gel cells are indeed quite sensitive. I've killed several before I knew anything about batteries, simply because I overcharged them. I always assumed those big cells of yours were refillable flooded types by their appearance hehe... Sonnenschein batts would be a dream of mine, but I'll never be able to afford them and it's almost impossible to get them from the trash around here, as big companies get big bucks for recycling them

[@FFcossag]

Yeah, you need to make friends in industry and intercept the batteries before the recyclers get them. Or make friends with the recyclers, offering to pay them 2-3 times scrap price if you'll get a chance to check out batteries before they ship them off to get broken up. Being very serious and professional about it helps a ton! I

[@duotronic6451]

Deep sigh count? ❤❤❤ 😂😂😂

[@alexdobroff5v]

Hi. Rules of nature: weakest dies.

[@mattmoreira210]

Oh, no! Anyway...

[@OffGridAussiePrepper]

I dont fking get it, why the fk does it occur, I had endless problems with 2volt cell banks so i gave it up, I will look forward to when i can afford 48v lipho batteries and all ya have to do is parallel them up. Where did u get that 2volt massive transformer or charger from??

[@FFcossag]

Basically all my stuff is scrapped telco gear. The 2 V power supply is a part of an old TV transmitter, I think it originally provided heater current for a 50 kW transmitter tube. I modded them to be variable from 1-14 V. I'm currently developing a kind of lead-acid BMS together with a friend. I think the "lead-acids self balance" mantra that we all live by is a meme. I have some cells that float at 2.4 V and ones that float at 2.10 V, of course there will be issues. It'll be very interesting to see what happens when we get some shunts across them to provide actual cell balance.

[@OffGridAussiePrepper]

@@FFcossag i am sick to death of unbalanced banks of any chemestry... u cant watch individual cells 24hrs a day 7 days a week, i rather neck myself. The manufacturers wont dare tell u that u needs a BMS or desultphators on ur batts cos they want u to destroy ya batts and then buy more, just like every car shud have a 50watt solar panel to keep the engine batt at 100%. So I hope u share this BMS with us... and get working on it b4 ur batts die.

[@ghassanALKIRSHI]

I also have the same issu with my opzv .. and some of the cells keeps floating high .. and some at very low voltage 2.42 2.19 I hope you can solve the problem or at least understanding what’s happening