Solar and Lifeline

campigloo wrote:
Hi y’all
First thanks to all who have tried to help with this project
I finally got my Renogy system up and running. 4 -100 watt panels on the roof. 30amp mppt controller, 2000w pure sine wave inverter charger. I finished off with 4 - 6v Lifeline deep cycles, wired series parallel to have 2 - 12v batteries. Purchased in December, man I was all excited, ready to go! Then I started using them. I’m soooo disappointed! At first they seemed fine. Then I put a small load on them. A few l e d light bulbs, a propane detector, the fridge on 12v service and an antenna amplifier. Ran the a/c tv, 160w for about a minute and the voltage plummeted. I don’t have the numbers because I didn’t worry about it at first, but the batteries have not performed well since. Lifeline tells me I need an additional 400 w solar, or I need a new charger that will equalize to 15+ v using the generator. Even after running the gen for 15 hours and charging to 100% according to the monitor and 13.4v according to the meter they will drop to 12.4 to 12.7 in a matter of a couple of hours tops. If I run the heater overnight the voltage drops to 12.3 to 12.0. My 2 Walmart 12v deep cycles outperformed these things!
Sorry for the long post but what are your systems doing and what do you think the problem might be? Any help would be really appreciated. I bought a couple of gallons of gasoline today incase I need to relieve some frustration!

What kind of "fridge on 12v service"? If it's an absorption fridge with propane/DC/AC, that may be your greatest battery killer right there. It takes a huge amount of 12VDC power to heat the gas on the 12V setting. At least it used to when I had a Dometic in my Roadtrek. The Atwood in the Sunstar didn't have a 12V setting, just gas and 120VAC. Your 400W of solar in decent sun should give you between 20 and 25 amps of recharge, so that should probably keep up with your other usage, unless I'm missing something. Entirely possible.

Have you been following the instructions in 5.4 and 5.5 here?

Extremely hard to do with just solar with short days and low sun until summer when solar gets better.

http://lifelinebatteries.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/6-0101-Rev-E-Lifeline-Technical-Manual.pdf

Thanks guys!
It is an absorption fridge and I should have expressed it as running on propane.
BFL13 thanks for the link!!!! No one ever mentioned it to me. Not the dealer I bought the batteries from or the Lifeline techs. Sun has been really good most days. I put off asking because of that but living in south Louisiana the sun has already gotten fairly intense.
Thanks y’all!

!2.7 volts is fully charged. Dropping to between 12.4 and 12.7 with a 15 amp load sounds completly normal to me.

Sounds like running the AC is taking down your batteries.

Figure out what your loads are. I have the same amount of batteries and a virtually identical solar setup and I have plenty of power. Loaded voltage doesn't tell you the state of charge, of course the voltage is going to be a bit lower when you're pulling from the battery. Don't over discharge your batteries, keep them full of water, and enjoy your free power. I'm not sure what controller you're using, but mine equalizes every 30 days automatically. I have had no issues with my batteries and they're always 100% charged when I go to take the trailer somewhere.

campigloo wrote:
At first they seemed fine. Then I put a small load on them.

What is "at first?"

2oldman wrote:

campigloo wrote:
At first they seemed fine. Then I put a small load on them.

What is "at first?"

At first is when I initially hooked them into the system. I bought them in December but don’t have an exact date or time. The batteries were brand new and installed within two hours of picking them up from the store into a fully functioning solar charge system. I don’t know how long they sat in the store but I was notified of their arrival to the store within 4 days of ordering and I picked them up the next day.

Twodownzero thanks for the encouragement! They’re agm batteries so no need to add water. Just add a charge and everything should be fine, but that ain’t hapnin for me.

The only complaints I've heard about Lifeline AGM battery owners come from those who rely exclusively on solar for their recharging.

The slow ramp up of solar, as opposed to flipping a switch for instant max amperage from the charging source applied at the battery's most depleted state, seems to frustrate them. I know it does my Northstar AGM.

So you have 440AH of AGM capacity with only 400 watts of Solar. While that ratio might be almost acceptable for flooded batteries, it is not for AGMs, especially those which say right in the user manual that deeper discharges require the ability to apply higher amperage, or the ability and wherewithall to apply an extended constant current charge after the normal absorption stage ends.

Beware of 'monitors' they drift, they need proper calibration, and occassional rezeroing, once the batteries are known to be truly full.

Its good you noticed the voltage sag under relatively light loads, you can recover a substantial amount of performance from these newish batteries if you can meet that minimum charge rate and perhaps hold higher voltages for extended periods.

But to keep them from falling over again, you will need to occassionally be able to Zap them with higher amps from their most depleted state and then hold absorption voltage until amperage tapers to 2.2amps or less.

A 20% charge rate, for 440AH of Lifeline AGm battery, is 88 amps.

Thats a heck of a lot more than 400 watts of solar, which is what, 24 amps on noon June 21?

So how are you going to get that 88 amps?

Be glad you are not cycling 440AH of Odyssey AGM batteries, they want no less than 40 amps per 100Ah of capacity, when cycled to 50% State of charge.

Lifeline at least states that constant current overcharge at the end of a regular absorption cycle can be effective in preventing the premature walk down in capaacity of batteries that see only low and slow charge rates. I do not recall seeing anything in Odyssey literature regarding what to do if one cannot meet that 40% charge rate when deep cycling.

I own a Northstar, similar to Odyssey, if I dont feed it high amps somewhat regularly, it protests with low loaded voltage and requires extremely long aborption stages for amperage to taper to prescribed levels, indicating full charge..
Been cycling it for 5.5 years and ~1100 deep cycles now, and the high amperage recharge is a big part of being able to achieve that.

I'm gonna discharge it a lot tonight and instantly hit it with a ~70% charge rate until amps taper to 0.4 @14.7v.

It's what your lifelines are Craving.