I am new here I registered to try and find some answers for my father he does not own a computer and lives off the grid in rural Idaho. A little about myself and why my dad looks to me for answers, I have worked in the electric utility industry for 30 years as a lineman and now as a system operator, operating a portion of the electric grid. My father is in his late 70's and has a very small fixed income which is the bigest problem for an easy solution.
He has an older diesel military generator made by Onan I believe it is a 10 KW 3Ø unit. He has some solar panels I can find out how many and how big. His battery bank is made up of 6 volt golf cart type batteries purchased from Costco. He has an inverter system I can find out the make and model. His problem is his battery bank made up of 16 batteries is not holding a charge and he must run his generator every 12 hours. He wants to add some more batteries and I explained to him that adding new batteries to the old ones will equalize the whole system and probably not improve his situation. At one point these batteries lasted him a couple days between rechargeing.
I am wondering if he could add a battery isolator to this system or a couple of them to stop the discharge of a new bank by the old banks?
I know this is backwards of how a system would be designed or fixed if he had a budget to do so but I am trying to help him to get something figured out. This is out of my area of expertise but I am wondering why a battery isolator would not work well and to split up his 16 batteries into 4 banks with an isolator so his batteries don't get drained down by the weak batteries. It would also allow him to just replace one of those banks once split into 4 with a newer bank.
Thanks for any help you can give and if you need to know any more particular info just ask I will have him provide me with that info. My father lives 7 hours away from me so I am not there but he is pretty sharp if I tell him what to check or look for.
Thanks Mike
He has an older diesel military generator made by Onan I believe it is a 10 KW 3Ø unit. He has some solar panels I can find out how many and how big. His battery bank is made up of 6 volt golf cart type batteries purchased from Costco. He has an inverter system I can find out the make and model. His problem is his battery bank made up of 16 batteries is not holding a charge and he must run his generator every 12 hours. He wants to add some more batteries and I explained to him that adding new batteries to the old ones will equalize the whole system and probably not improve his situation. At one point these batteries lasted him a couple days between rechargeing.
I am wondering if he could add a battery isolator to this system or a couple of them to stop the discharge of a new bank by the old banks?
I know this is backwards of how a system would be designed or fixed if he had a budget to do so but I am trying to help him to get something figured out. This is out of my area of expertise but I am wondering why a battery isolator would not work well and to split up his 16 batteries into 4 banks with an isolator so his batteries don't get drained down by the weak batteries. It would also allow him to just replace one of those banks once split into 4 with a newer bank.
Thanks for any help you can give and if you need to know any more particular info just ask I will have him provide me with that info. My father lives 7 hours away from me so I am not there but he is pretty sharp if I tell him what to check or look for.
Thanks Mike
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