Confusion on battery charging

" Right now I am getting 10 amps out of the panels and the voltage is at 13.6"

How many of those amps are going to the battery and how many to other 12v loads? You can be in Float with full batts and be getting max panel amps to run things. If the loads are more amps draw than the panels can do, then you get a draw on the battery too. Once the battery voltage goes down from that to whatever voltage is set for that, the controller should kick into Bulk again.

On the two hour absorb that keeps resetting, how about setting absorb time to zero and using a higher Float voltage (that presumably does not keep resetting?)

My controller is the Blue Sky 3000i. It is functioning according to the manual. The solar panel can be at absorption of 14.3 with any amount of amps needed to maintain that voltage. If the panel output is interrupted and the battery cannot maintain 14.3 volts, the controller will revert to bulk mode. When it returns to 14.3, the absorption mode clock will be reset to 2 hours which is default or to whatever time I set.

Right now I am getting 10 amps out of the panels and the voltage is at 13.6. My old controller would have dialed down the amps and maintained 13.6. My new controller will be pumping maximum amps into the battery for the remainder of the day. Since my old batteries performed well and lasted for 7 years, it just seems that they are now being overcharged and will die prematurely.

Mex... so far I have not seen the level of charge you recommend. The lowest amps I have seen is about 4 or 5. By then charging typically enters float or I cycle back and forth but still never drop below about 4 amps. I guess that means I don't have a problem with overcharging the batteries.

Because of limited sun, 14.4 is ideal but at the end of the day you must see no greater amount of charge going into the 2 batteries than one single ampere. You don't need to see this every day but once every 7-10 days is vital.

Schedule tasks and loads to have a "light drawdown day" or increase the panel wattage total. Whatever it takes. This is gospel from Concorde Lifeline and I have verified that it is not a trivial fact.

This stops loss of capacity over time and will vastly prolong the life of the Lifeline battery. At 14.4 volts one half ampere per battery.

My Lifeline GPL-4CT (6V GC) are spec'd at 13.2-13.4V float and 14.2-14.4V absorb, what are the specs for yours?

And those voltages are measured at the BATTERY TERMINALS and not somewhere else.

My controller will revert to absorb if the voltage drops to xx volts for yy time. It also has remote voltage and battery temperature probes so that it knows the battery terminal voltage and adjusts the charging based on the battery temperature.

If your CC doesn't have an adjustment or problem you could upgrade.

In these conditions I would shorten the absorption time to 30 minutes.

A better controller would help. My controller adjusts absorption time based on battery voltage. Full charge is about 5 minutes as a storage mode. Less than 12.4 goes 2 hours. Less than 11.9 goes all day. All times and voltages etc fully adjustable.

Why two hours? Don’t most recent chargers indefinitely charge at the absorption rate until appropriate to move to float?

Some controllers will revert to Bulk if the battery voltage falls to some low level during the charging profile, but a passing cloud should not cause this. All that does is make the charging amps drop. For voltage to drop so low in a brief time, there must be quite a load on the batteries, or they are in hard shape, or something is going on.

Post the brand and model of that solar controller so we can read the owner's manual on the subject of its charging profile.

Any chance you have connected to the Load terminals instead of the Battery terminals? The Load connection could have more actions programmed to make it act like that.

14.3 for more of the day is not necessarily a bad thing as such. You still have half the 24 hr day when they are not being charged.

Lifeline AGMs have particular charging specs you can read on line. You got 7 years from yours and did not even come close to following those charging specs. It should work out even better if you did follow them more closely.

my tiny agm gets 13.8v float with a 'charge recovery voltage' or 13.2v, with no load it does not revert to bulk and start charging again due to a cloud.