Capacity Testing and 20 HR Rating
I'm thinking about doing a capacity test on my four GC2's. They have a 20hr rating of 215Ah. One thing I'm curious about is how the 20hr rating would have been determined. Being 6v, would they h...
Forum Discussion
BFL,
I wouldn't expect floating to cure stratification, seeing as we now have all these "4-stage" chargers with "recondition" mode. But maybe floating slows the process somewhat?
My Trimetric appears to be over-compensating by quite a bit, to the tune of about 10-15% on a 50-100% charge. But it appears to be quite a bit more accurate in the 80-100% cycle range. I told Niner it was perhaps under-compensating, but I may have been confused about that? Seems to me, if the meter is showing say 240Ah replaced, when only 216 were removed, that would mean it's over-compensating, right??? Or am I completely mixed up on that?
All I know is last fall, half the bank was accepting about 8a/100Ah @ 14.8Vabs; so about 9a/110Ah. (And that seemed to line up fairly well with your 5a/110Ah @ 14.5Vabs). So I would expect to see the full bank accept about 34a at 90%. But, the whole bank is accepting the pm4b's full 45 amps past 90%. That's more like 11a/100Ah, or 12a/110Ah. And twice now, I've seen amps begin to taper in the 91-92% range, whereas I expected to see amps taper in the mid-to-high 80's range. (And that's doing the calculations myself, based on amps X time minus some loss; not just relying on the Trimetric's readout). So I definitely want to get a better hold on those numbers... not that any of this is critical... but I'd like to have some sort of bench mark for that 90-95% range. But obviously, I'll have to settle on 'close enough'.
All in all, things are looking up, so a few more cycles with the 45 amper, and then I'll switch things out to the pm3-75, and see how that goes. I'm curious to see when amps will taper at the higher C rate. And with solar taking care of the upper range of charging, I should be able to focus generator run time on replacing heavy Ah usage from the a/c, and for using my toaster oven; which I have been avoiding 'til now. But I do not see the sense in firing up the gennie, just to run the microwave for 4 or 5 minutes, so that will remain my biggest power hog, with regards to solar charging.
I received the Tracer yesterday, so hopefully I'll be doing some solar testing very soon!
I wouldn't expect floating to cure stratification, seeing as we now have all these "4-stage" chargers with "recondition" mode. But maybe floating slows the process somewhat?
My Trimetric appears to be over-compensating by quite a bit, to the tune of about 10-15% on a 50-100% charge. But it appears to be quite a bit more accurate in the 80-100% cycle range. I told Niner it was perhaps under-compensating, but I may have been confused about that? Seems to me, if the meter is showing say 240Ah replaced, when only 216 were removed, that would mean it's over-compensating, right??? Or am I completely mixed up on that?
All I know is last fall, half the bank was accepting about 8a/100Ah @ 14.8Vabs; so about 9a/110Ah. (And that seemed to line up fairly well with your 5a/110Ah @ 14.5Vabs). So I would expect to see the full bank accept about 34a at 90%. But, the whole bank is accepting the pm4b's full 45 amps past 90%. That's more like 11a/100Ah, or 12a/110Ah. And twice now, I've seen amps begin to taper in the 91-92% range, whereas I expected to see amps taper in the mid-to-high 80's range. (And that's doing the calculations myself, based on amps X time minus some loss; not just relying on the Trimetric's readout). So I definitely want to get a better hold on those numbers... not that any of this is critical... but I'd like to have some sort of bench mark for that 90-95% range. But obviously, I'll have to settle on 'close enough'.
All in all, things are looking up, so a few more cycles with the 45 amper, and then I'll switch things out to the pm3-75, and see how that goes. I'm curious to see when amps will taper at the higher C rate. And with solar taking care of the upper range of charging, I should be able to focus generator run time on replacing heavy Ah usage from the a/c, and for using my toaster oven; which I have been avoiding 'til now. But I do not see the sense in firing up the gennie, just to run the microwave for 4 or 5 minutes, so that will remain my biggest power hog, with regards to solar charging.
I received the Tracer yesterday, so hopefully I'll be doing some solar testing very soon!
