VOC Measurement of my AGMs vs. SOC

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  • BackwoodsEE
    Solar Fanatic
    • Jun 2017
    • 217

    VOC Measurement of my AGMs vs. SOC

    Last night I ran my batteries down all evening to give them a workout; they normally run in float with my grid-tied hybrid system. It is a 48V 410 Ah battery bank that consists of eight Rolls S6-460AGM batteries.They are AGM, so the only SOC indication I get during usage is the Outback FlexNet DC, which is a simple Coulomb counter that assumes a 97% charge efficiency.

    I disconnected the batteries from everything at around 10 PM, with a 76% SOC reading from the FlexNet after 97 Ah had been pulled out of the batteries. That's about what you would expect: 24% of 410 Ah is 98.4 Ah.

    On this cold morning, about 10 hours later, with the batteries at -12 degrees C, I measured the following voltages across each battery:

    1: 6.17
    2: 6.18
    3: 6.21
    4: 6.19
    5: 6.17
    6: 6.19
    7: 6.15
    8: 6.19

    This averages out to 6.181 V.

    According to this white paper from Discover Energy Corp., the Voc of a 100% full battery is 2.125V at -10 degrees C as compared to 2.150V. Rolls says that the Voc of their AGMs is between 6.24V and 6.31V, presumably at 25 degrees C. I scaled my average measurement up by 1.8% to get an adjusted average of 6.25V.

    Thus it looks like my SOC may indeed have been 76% although probably more like 70%. The range of Voc for an SOC of 70% is between 6.21V and 6.28V, with 6.25V right in the middle.

    That makes sense; another graph provided by Rolls says that the battery capacity last night was only about 72% of the room-temperature rating, or 295 Ah. So discharging 97 Ah would have left me with an SOC of 67%.

    Disconnecting the battery from everything overnight is a pain, and you can't measure specific gravity in a sealed battery. So it's reassuring to see my Coulomb counter giving me a fairly decent indication of SOC.

    Question: Is there anything to be concerned about with the slightly lower Voc of battery #7? These are brand new, in float service for about a month. This is only their second discharge down to around 75%.

  • Mike90250
    Moderator
    • May 2009
    • 16020

    #2
    I'd toss a small 6V automotive charger onto it for half hour, and see what it does. Only one charger, and be careful of how things are grounded, you don't want to short your battery bank thru the ground pin of the charger.
    Be advised this will FAIL if your battery grounding scheme does not agree with the grounding in the charger. Most (but not all) chargers have somewhat isolated outputs and this would work fine.
    Powerfab top of pole PV mount (2) | Listeroid 6/1 w/st5 gen head | XW6048 inverter/chgr | Iota 48V/15A charger | Morningstar 60A MPPT | 48V, 800A NiFe Battery (in series)| 15, Evergreen 205w "12V" PV array on pole | Midnight ePanel | Grundfos 10 SO5-9 with 3 wire Franklin Electric motor (1/2hp 240V 1ph ) on a timer for 3 hr noontime run - Runs off PV ||
    || Midnight Classic 200 | 10, Evergreen 200w in a 160VOC array ||
    || VEC1093 12V Charger | Maha C401 aa/aaa Charger | SureSine | Sunsaver MPPT 15A

    solar: http://tinyurl.com/LMR-Solar
    gen: http://tinyurl.com/LMR-Lister

    Comment

    • BackwoodsEE
      Solar Fanatic
      • Jun 2017
      • 217

      #3
      I tried the individual battery charge you recommended, Mike, with a little 50W hobby charger I have--a very versatile tool to have around! Mindful of your cautions, I checked the resistance between AC prongs, metal case, and DC output, and everything was high resistance. No sparks when I hooked it up to battery #7.

      After putting in about 8Ah, its voltage went up as expected. I checked Voc a few hours later and it was a few hundreds of a volt higher than its neighbors. Then I hooked everything up and check the voltage this morning with the charge controllers putting about 12A in (cloudy day) and the Radian inverting almost all of it.

      And ... battery #7 has a DC voltage 0.18V lower than its neighbors! Grrrr...

      At least the AC voltage across it (18 mVac) is the same as the others.

      Comment

      • Mike90250
        Moderator
        • May 2009
        • 16020

        #4
        Lather, rinse, repeat, till the battery matches the others. Or you have a bad battery if 3 or 5 half hour cycles does not bring it around
        Powerfab top of pole PV mount (2) | Listeroid 6/1 w/st5 gen head | XW6048 inverter/chgr | Iota 48V/15A charger | Morningstar 60A MPPT | 48V, 800A NiFe Battery (in series)| 15, Evergreen 205w "12V" PV array on pole | Midnight ePanel | Grundfos 10 SO5-9 with 3 wire Franklin Electric motor (1/2hp 240V 1ph ) on a timer for 3 hr noontime run - Runs off PV ||
        || Midnight Classic 200 | 10, Evergreen 200w in a 160VOC array ||
        || VEC1093 12V Charger | Maha C401 aa/aaa Charger | SureSine | Sunsaver MPPT 15A

        solar: http://tinyurl.com/LMR-Solar
        gen: http://tinyurl.com/LMR-Lister

        Comment

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