MattyB

I figured for an extra £60 the balancer couldn't hurt, and gives me some peace of mind at least. But it does appear to have helped. There is no other cable between the batteries, however, due to space restrictions the batteries are kept one above the other rather than side by side, meaning that the joining cable is 500mm long (50mm2 section). Would this longer joining cable be responsible for any issues?

Wow thanks for all of your replies! Sadly, notifications of your responses went to my junk folder hence my lack of input.. The problem is pretty much cleared up now after connecting a battery balancer although I do wonder why most people get away without having to use one of these. It also emerged that my voltmeter slightly overstated the voltages after I borrowed a better quality voltmeter from a friend. As for the confusion about charging voltages, what I meant was that I had the charger set to 28.8v (or 14.4v per battery), and receiving uneven voltages on each battery. The 12v charger was a different unit that I used to bring the batteries up to full charge independently. There are no 12v appliances involved, only 230v. Temp sensor was fitted. Anyway, like I said the problem is pretty much sorted and the voltages have levelled up and are fairly consistent with what you'd expect. Thanks everyone for your enthusiastic input, sorry I was off the radar for so long!

Hi all, I was hoping somebody might shed some light on a problem I have with my new setup. I have a Victron MultiPlus 24/2000/50 inverter/charger connected to 2x Banner 250ah 12v batteries wired in series of course. Everything in my setup is brand new. I charge with an lpg generator. I programmed my charger to charge at a maximum voltage of 14.4v as stated on the Banner website. My problem is that while charging, one battery was reading a perfect 14.4v but the other battery was reading 15v. There was a fair bit of gassing going on and a faint smell of eggs. I thought this may be due to a difference in charge level in the batteries so charged them to float independently of each other on my old 12v charger. I left them to settle for 24 hours, and upon re-connection to my new Victron unit the individual voltages were identical (within 0.01v). However this didn't fix the problem. I have dropped the maximum charge voltage to 14.1v yet one battery still gets 14.6v while the other gets 14.2v. I'm obviously very concerned about under/over charging, can anybody explain the possible cause here or if it's even something to worry about? I spoke to the battery supplier and they told me to speak to Victron. Victron told me to speak to the charger supplier. They told me to speak to the battery supplier. Given that they won't help, I had hoped somebody here might! Any comments will be greatly appreciated, Many thanks