Battery help please

[MtB]

9 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

If you go back to the original post you will see the voltage was below 10 volts so probably too low to excite the Travelpower alternator 

 

So may we surmise the BMV 501 was claiming 95% SoC at the same time as the batteries were under 10V? 

 

If so, there's the problem!

[Jeanie920]

7 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

This is meaningless to me, but, is it relevant ?

 

"My travel power needs 12v to enable it to charge the batteries"

 

 

Well it’s relevant insofar as the Travel power needs 12v to charge the batteries. I have no other means of charging the batteries as far as I know. Up until now everything has worked as it should. 

The travel power has a rocker switch. When it’s working it has a green light. If the green light isn’t lit it isnt charging. 

According to the manual it says if the voltage is too low the function of the travel power will not work properly and the red Light will be lit. A Good battery will have a voltage above 12v. This is increased to 24v by the converter supplying the Travel power box

i think it works in conjunction with the Victron inverter. When the voltage is too low a battery low light comes on and the inverter switches off. 

 

11 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

So may we surmise the BMV 501 was claiming 95% SoC at the same time as the batteries were under 10V? 

 

If so, there's the problem!

Yes that’s what was happening. When I had the batteries tested yesterday a couple of them were reading 87% on the printout  but on the others the print out was saying to buy new batteries as they were very low. 

[ditchcrawler]

2 minutes ago, Jeanie920 said:

Well it’s relevant insofar as the Travel power needs 12v to charge the batteries. I have no other means of charging the batteries as far as I know. Up until now everything has worked as it should. 

The travel power has a rocker switch. When it’s working it has a green light. If the green light isn’t lit it isnt charging. 

According to the manual it says if the voltage is too low the function of the travel power will not work properly and the red Light will be lit. A Good battery will have a voltage above 12v. This is increased to 24v by the converter supplying the Travel power box

i think it works in conjunction with the Victron inverter. When the voltage is too low a battery low light comes on and the inverter switches off. 

 

I appreciate your batteries at the moment are probably knackered but you should never run them low enough for the inverter to drop out on low volts. I am guessing you have a combi inverter charger to recharge your batteries when the Travelpower is running. do you know how big this is?

[Jeanie920]

25 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

If you go back to the original post you will see the voltage was below 10 volts so probably too low to excite the Travelpower alternator 

In which case they were probably being left at a low state of charge for some time, did you fully recharge them the next day?

Yes always. We were always on mains power in a Marina until we left three weeks ago. This was when we discovered that they weren’t holding their charge. Once the travel power was charging the batteries the bolts were over 14 

[MtB]

5 minutes ago, Jeanie920 said:

 

 

Yes that’s what was happening. When I had the batteries tested yesterday a couple of them were reading 87% on the printout  but on the others the print out was saying to buy new batteries as they were very low. 

 

 

Slow down, what 'print out' is this????!!!

 

And what does 'the others'? mean

[ditchcrawler]

1 minute ago, Jeanie920 said:

Yes always. We were always on mains power in a Marina until we left three weeks ago. This was when we discovered that they weren’t holding their charge. Once the travel power was charging the batteries the bolts were over 14 

If you didnt run your engine for a day what did the voltage drop to, do you remember?

[Jeanie920]

2 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

I appreciate your batteries at the moment are probably knackered but you should never run them low enough for the inverter to drop out on low volts. I am guessing you have a combi inverter charger to recharge your batteries when the Travelpower is running. do you know how big this is?

Well they were always on 100% according to the battery monitor and they were permanently on shore power. 

Ive got a Phoenix Multiplus 12/2500/120

3 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

 

Slow down, what 'print out' is this????!!!

 

And what does 'the others'? mean

The man from the Marina workshop brought something to test the batteries.the machine he had produced a printout of the state of each battery. Unfortunately he didn’t give me the printout.  He tested 4 of them. I only discovered the extra battery this evening. The other 2 batteries. 

[Jeanie920]

8 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

If you didnt run your engine for a day what did the voltage drop to, do you remember?

We were travelling every day for 7 or 8 hours so we ran it every day. But overnight if we weren’t able to run the engine late at night,the next morning  it had dropped to around 8. Then when we would start off it would slowly rise to just over 10 but then we couldn’t get it to rise anymore until we got shore power 

Edited June 13, 2018 by Jeanie920

[ditchcrawler]

2 minutes ago, Jeanie920 said:

Well they were always on 100% according to the battery monitor and they were permanently on shore power. 

Ive got a Phoenix Multiplus 12/2500/120

OK so that is 120 amp charger, did you have to top the batteries up a lot? but the inverter will only give you 2.5 Kw, did you say you have a second as well?

Just now, Jeanie920 said:

We were travelling every day for 7 or 8 hours so we ran it every day. But overnight on the couple of times that we couldn’t get it to work it had dropped to around 8. Then when we would start off it would slowly rise to just over 10 but then we couldn’t get it to rise anymore until we got shore power 

Sorry to say those batteries are well gone at 8 volts but it does demonstrate how miss leading the % reading was.

[dmr]

1 hour ago, roland elsdon said:

Not if its been pluggedin for 14 years 364 days.

without being any more flippant your electricity demand is  massive. If you fail to meet the capacity the system demands you will simply kill the new batteries, by discharging them too deeply

 I cant understand why the travelpower will not charge if batts are at a low voltage i thought a travelpower was a fancy name for engine driven mains alternator which then powers a battery charger.

presumuably there is no engine driven alternator other than to start the engine.

im with mr s. All electric cooking is a bad solution .

 

It might be the battery charger rather than the travel power that is temperamental. However some/most travelpowers do need a 12v feed to make them work. I dunno how critical this is on voltage but maybe the batteries are so low that the TP can't start. My black box TP has two 12v feeds, a switched feed via the ignition and a permanent feed from the domestic bank. Not quite sure why it was done this way but maybe the OPs is the same.

 

..............Dave

[Jeanie920]

3 minutes ago, dmr said:

It might be the battery charger rather than the travel power that is temperamental. However some/most travelpowers do need a 12v feed to make them work. I dunno how critical this is on voltage but maybe the batteries are so low that the TP can't start. My black box TP has two 12v feeds, a switched feed via the ignition and a permanent feed from the domestic bank. Not quite sure why it was done this way but maybe the OPs is the same.

 

..............Dave

The battery charger worked fine once it had the required voltage. Just that the battery voltage had dropped too low. 

[Jeanie920]

20 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

OK so that is 120 amp charger, did you have to top the batteries up a lot? but the inverter will only give you 2.5 Kw, did you say you have a second as well?

Sorry to say those batteries are well gone at 8 volts but it does demonstrate how miss leading the % reading was.

Not a lot. About an hour on shore power and the % would rise from 92 to 97 and that was enough to start the TP .

there are two big blue Victron boxes. The original owner of the boat left some notes. They don’t mean anything to me .He calculated how much power he would use .

He says that the 2 Victron multi plus boxes are each capable of supplying 10 amps from the batteries and also act as battery chargers 

[MtB]

31 minutes ago, Jeanie920 said:

Well they were always on 100% according to the battery monitor and they were permanently on shore power. 

Ive got a Phoenix Multiplus 12/2500/120

The man from the Marina workshop brought something to test the batteries.the machine he had produced a printout of the state of each battery. Unfortunately he didn’t give me the printout.  He tested 4 of them. I only discovered the extra battery this evening. The other 2 batteries. 

 

 

I suspect this was deliberate. There is no known way to effectively measure the capacity of  battery with a machine in less than several hours.

 

Whatever this device was, I suspect its printout is nothing to do with battery condition, more a device to eave at punters that (surprise surprise) always indicates new batteries are required. 

 

Cynical, moi?

 

Mind you from what you've said so far, it is pretty clear your batteries are comprehensively goosed all the same.

Edited June 13, 2018 by Mike the Boilerman

[dmr]

10 minutes ago, Jeanie920 said:

The battery charger worked fine once it had the required voltage. Just that the battery voltage had dropped too low. 

I believe that some battery chargers will not charge a very flat battery, pretty useless really 'cus thats when you really need them. This is why I suggested that it might be the charger rather than the Travel Power. Stuff is designed to work on about 12 volts so once the batteries are below 10 or so some things might get unhappy. Managing the leccy is always going to be a challenge on a gas free CCi'ng boat. The Smartgage is a very useful device to nicely complement amp-hour type battery monitors.

 

..............Dave

[dmr]

4 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

 

I suspect this was deliberate. There is no known way to effectively measure the capacity of  battery with a machine in less than several hours.

 

Whatever this device was, I suspect its printout is nothing to do with battery condition, more a device to eave at punters that (surprise surprise) always indicates new batteries are required. 

 

Cynical, moi?

 

Mind you from what you've said so far, it is pretty clear your batteries are comprehensively goosed all the same.

I think they are more used by battery suppliers to "prove" that the batteries they just sold you are good, and have printed evidence that its your fault if you return them a month later.

 

.....an even more cynical me.

 

The standard drop tester is the tool of choice for confirming batteries need replacing......customer takes flat battery in to get it tested, drop tester confirms battery is flat!!!!! New battery needed.

 

...............Dave

[MtB]

1 minute ago, dmr said:

I think they are more used by battery suppliers to "prove" that the batteries they just sold you are good, and have printed evidence that its your fault if you return them a month later.

 

.....an even more cynical me.

 

So what does the team think these "new battery testers" are actually measuring? Just terminal voltage would be my guess. 

 

When I bought those two leisure batteries (now totally goosed by the way) at Stratford last year, they used a cheapo multimeter to measure terminal voltage and declare them fully charged. I saw therm come straight off the pallet, get measured, and brand labels printed to match the price I chose to pay....

[Dr Bob]

The big problem here is the OP is running an 'all electric' boat with a big power demand and a big battery bank and doesn't understand the battery monitor, the bmv501. You have been on shore power most of the time so it has not been an issue. 

Your bmv501 probably thinks you have a capacity of over 1000Ahrs whereas you maybe have only 10% of this. You must start looking at voltage, and especially voltage at rest, as well as Ahrs consumed. I NEVER look at the % on my meter. It tells lies.

You now have unusably low voltages so you must replace batteries. Either replace with a similar size bank but watch how much power you use OR fit a smaller bank (say 6-700Ahrs) and put a gas cooker/hob in. Either way you need to learn how to use your battery monitor properly or you will need to renew your new ones after a few months of off grid use.

[roland elsdon]

I appreciate i am very 1980s in my technological knowledge but are you really saying that a boat with a travel power has no alternator for charging domestic batteries? So you swing a 7 kva alternator to power a  mains battery charger, and the charger cannot sense when the batts are low. If this is the case a simple flying lead from the engine start battery  with the engine running would allow sufficient voltage if needed to kick in the travelthingy. Or is the start battery on a mains charger too?

when you replace  the batts a heavy duty 120 amp alternator for domestic charging would help. Then you would use the travelthingy to do the washing and other mains only high power stuff.

 

reminds me of a screwed up new boat i was asked to look at. The batteries went flat every night after about 5 hours. The builder had saved money and chrged the bow thruster battery off a charger hidden in the front and run a mains lead under the floor. This was wired to a permenently on inverter. The bow thruster batteries were about 6 years old. All that was generated was heat and the merry sound of inverter alarms.

I disconnected the inverter and told him to go buy a shaft. Course the builder had gone broke...

[dmr]

8 minutes ago, roland elsdon said:

I appreciate i am very 1980s in my technological knowledge but are you really saying that a boat with a travel power has no alternator for charging domestic batteries? So you swing a 7 kva alternator to power a  mains battery charger, and the charger cannot sense when the batts are low. If this is the case a simple flying lead from the engine start battery  with the engine running would allow sufficient voltage if needed to kick in the travelthingy. Or is the start battery on a mains charger too?

when you replace  the batts a heavy duty 120 amp alternator for domestic charging would help. Then you would use the travelthingy to do the washing and other mains only high power stuff.

 

reminds me of a screwed up new boat i was asked to look at. The batteries went flat every night after about 5 hours. The builder had saved money and chrged the bow thruster battery off a charger hidden in the front and run a mains lead under the floor. This was wired to a permenently on inverter. The bow thruster batteries were about 6 years old. All that was generated was heat and the merry sound of inverter alarms.

I disconnected the inverter and told him to go buy a shaft. Course the builder had gone broke...

I have heard of other boats with only a TravelPower and no domestic alternator, but I would expect a starter alternator as otherwise you really have got all your eggs in the TP basket. I think the big 7kW TP is actually two 3.5kW TPs rolled together in the same box so the OP already sort of has a dedicated charging system separate from the washing machine. I think the TP could be driven from the starter battery but not sure if there is any current draw when its turned off. A flying lead or alternator shorting relay would fix the charger start up issue but that's neither here nor there 'cus the batteries really should Never be allow to get to such a low state of charge.

 

................Dave

23 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

So what does the team think these "new battery testers" are actually measuring? Just terminal voltage would be my guess. 

 

When I bought those two leisure batteries (now totally goosed by the way) at Stratford last year, they used a cheapo multimeter to measure terminal voltage and declare them fully charged. I saw therm come straight off the pallet, get measured, and brand labels printed to match the price I chose to pay....

Goosed already, you need to get yourself a Smartgage ?

 

..............Dave

[roland elsdon]

I have a plug in cigar socket voltmeter at one endof the line in the back cabin and a $15 digital voltmeter in the living kitchen bedroom music room library bathroom . (10 foot extension) im rarely out of sight of the voltmeter. If it goes below 12.2 with the fridge compressor on i turn off the fridge and go to bed.

high tech monitoring. 

[Detling]

12 minutes ago, dmr said:

Goosed already, you need to get yourself a Smartgage ?

Even Gibbo said the Smartgage also tells lies when the batteries are below 50% of original capacity. You can only rely on having a voltage above 14V and a small current (about 1 amp per battery)  that stays the same for more than 30 minutes to consider the batteries are fully charged.  The victron 501 that is there will do a good job but you need to look at the voltage and current and ignore the % reading, if correctly set for the charge efficiency and Peukert value then the % will be right but both those parameters need adjusting as the batteries age, I suspect they have never been adjusted since the batteries were fitted 15 years ago.

[MtB]

20 minutes ago, dmr said:

 

Goosed already, you need to get yourself a Smartgage ?

 

..............Dave

 

I've got two already! They were no help at all.....

 

[WotEver]

1 hour ago, Jeanie920 said:

Well they were always on 100% according to the battery monitor...

You’ve said this a few times now. I suggest that you need a SmartGauge which, unlike a BMV, won’t get progressively more and more inaccurate as the batteries age. 

[MtB]

3 minutes ago, WotEver said:

You’ve said this a few times now. I suggest that you need a SmartGauge which, unlike a BMV, won’t get progressively more and more inaccurate as the batteries age. 

 

I bought into this lie and the result was a £400 goosed set of batteries. 

[WotEver]

Just now, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

I bought into this lie and the result was a £400 goosed set of batteries. 

Give it a rest, Mike. 

 

Ignore the petulant child, a SmartGauge will sort your problems out.