Conext Battery Monitor ?s

[Sunking]

You are welcome. Keep us posted. You are Spot on, SG is your friend. A monitor, well is just a monitor and will betray you.

Folks come here at least once a week with Battery Monitors and wondering why their batteries are toast. One moron spent $30K on his system and does not know one single thing about batteries or his system. He depending on automation and contractors to do his work. Don't make that mistake. Learn all you can. You are off to a great start and here is your warm fuzzy.

[hammick]

SG is your friend. A monitor, well is just a monitor and will betray you.

Folks come here at least once a week with Battery Monitors and wondering why their batteries are toast. One moron spent $30K on his system and does not know one single thing about batteries or his system. He depending on automation and contractors to do his work. Don't make that mistake.

I fully understand. I intend to tweak my Battery monitors around my SG readings and realize it's an ongoing process as batteries age and lose capacity. I like having my Bogart monitor in my living quarters. Gives me something to look at and is very helpful as long as your realize it isn't the gospel of battery status.

I have hope that ten or fifteen years down the road when the wife and I are living full time on solar that the technology will not require SG readings and watering batteries. We shall see.

My two closest neighbors with professionally installed systems fried their fist set of batteries prematurely. Neither of them know much about their systems let alone own a hydrometer.

I spent a few hours trying to help one of them revive his batteries but he didn't really have the desire to learn. Plus his Outback stuff (although a very nice system) has a much harder learning curve than the Schneider stuff. His genset is way oversized and he runs it a lot (propane with autostart). But I can't convince him to replace all his incandescent bulbs with leds. I guess he is waiting for them to burn out. Funny thing is he limits when his wife can charge her Iphone. I was hoping he would learn so his next set of batteries would live a long healthy life. Not likely to happen.

[Sunking]

Well let me give you a tip for the future. Look up and study Coulomb Counting for batteries. Really simple stuff, You count Amp Hours in, then count Amp Hours out. A simple fuel gauge...

However like using voltage is plagued with problems, especially if used on Lead Acid batteries. Since Lead Acid battery charge efficiency changes moment to moment is not worth a flip. Lithium is somewhat doable because charge efficiency is fairly constant at 92 to 98% efficient in terms of amp hours. Not to be confused with watt hours or power. They are two different things. But in any use must be calibrated frequently, like every cycle with Pb batteries.

[Riley5781]

My long planned system is going live this weekend. Pretty similar to Hamick's system (Schieder XW+ and 48V series FLA batteries). I have 2 questions:

1) I have a few hydrometer battery testers kicking around in my workshop but want to make sure I have the best that will give good readings. Any recommendations a good SG tester? (heard mixed comments on the FREAS). I don't want to risk my new battery bank.....

2) Since I am not at the cabin all the time, I am looking to remotely monitor the SOC. Probably being conservative and giving the generator a quick run manually if I have any concerns about the batteries getting low. Obviously can't do measure the SG remotely so wondering if Hamick's monitor ended up being any value?

Given I will have next to no load when I am not there (perhaps 40watts fulltime) and a 3KW panel setup in a sunny summer time region, perhaps there is nothing to worry about (but I hate being blind).

I was planning to observe/track the consumption verses charge as a rough guide (Coulomb Counting) as a rough guide. Off to read up on that now.

Riley

[Sunking]

Your best hydrometer is a Temperature Compensate floater. Less than $10 like a Deka.

FWIW Coulomb Counting is just about useless on Pb batteries. Only slightly better than SOC voltage.