Keeping batteries in series in balance

[Adailton11]

Hello from Croatia. I am new here and dont want to add new topic so i will ask here... just want to ask you guys one question. I have 24v system. 6 bateries. 2 in a row. What is the critical moment to bateries get charged on generator. They are at morning before sun mostly at 23.4-23.7. In rare cases they fall to 22.9. Any sugesetions?
Ty

[Mike90250]

Hello from Croatia. I am new here and dont want to add new topic so i will ask here... just want to ask you guys one question. I have 24v system. 6 bateries. 2 in a row. What is the critical moment to bateries get charged on generator. They are at morning before sun mostly at 23.4-23.7. In rare cases they fall to 22.9. Any sugesetions?
Ty

Welcome. If you have solar, running the generator in the morning, so that you are shutting it off by 10 am, allows the generator to quickly boost the battery, and then the solar can slowly complete the charging.

If you don't have solar, you have to balance the cost of generator fuel & maintenance against the cost of batteries, save fuel, run generator less = ruins batteries by letting them sit in a low state of charge for long times.

[Sunking]

When you say lead acid I assume lead carbon respond the same ?

Same battery no difference. Lead carbon = lead acid. Every deep cycle battery manufacture today adds a bit of carbon to the lead alloy to slow down sulfation. Nothing new, been around 10 or more years.

Deep cycle batteries add carbon, SLI batteries are now adding silver. Every Ford vehicle today uses silver calcium lead acid batteries. Every deep cycle battery made today has a bit of carbon and antimony added to the lead.

[jflorey2]

When you say lead acid I assume lead carbon respond the same ?

Lead "carbon" is still lead acid, yes.

[travissand]

Every deep cycle battery made today has a bit of carbon and antimony added to the lead.

Wow I did not know that. So how about these new Outback carbon batteries do they have a higher carbon content or something? What is it that they have to brag about?

[travissand]

I found this HC02 Equalizer. Looks like a good thing to have ?

https://www.amazon.com/Battery-Equalizer-Voltage-Balancer-support/dp/B01JJ4X8CO

I was looking at this balancer myself. The balancer is inexpensive enough and I like the idea of resting assured that they'll stay in balance but can this balancer create problems? I have 32 six volt batteries on my first solar set up. It's only 24 volt system . Unfortunately they sat dead for 2 years and got sulfated. They vary in age by one year. I'm not positive how many kilowatt-hours they hold but somewhere between 5 and 10 instead of 30.

They seem to be having trouble staying balanced. I think I need to identify the weakest view batteries and kick them out of the system. It doesn't help that a lot of my wires are different lengths but are hugely oversized which helps counter the different voltage drops under load. This is not my design but it's enough storage for me so I'll continue using it for now. Anyway my point is I'm wondering if a balancer could help. I'm worried with a balancer installed if a battery starts to short out it will drain all of the others further down then it would have if the balancer wasn't in place. Obviously my batteries are not balanced very well especially now so would this help my situation or hurt? I'd rather not bring every single battery down to the point of the lowest battery instead of the lowest string. Or would it bring the lowest up to the highest or somewhere in the middle? The balancer itself is very inexpensive and I think it would be nice to install with a new set of batteries. I'd like to be able to pull small 12 volt loads for some equipment without throwing things out of balance.

I don't like this guy's comparisons in his sales pitch about a car battery lasting longer. It's not a fair comparison but here's his Pro balancing lead acid sales pitch. https://youtu.be/d7bIwEB3iWk

[jflorey2]

Wow I did not know that. So how about these new Outback carbon batteries do they have a higher carbon content or something? What is it that they have to brag about?

It's marketing. It sounds really cool.