Battery life cycle counter

[Mobilesport]

It would be nice to have something that counts how many times you have cycled your battery to get a ballpark idea of how much life they have left.
Just a thought

[grizzzman]

For what it's worth, the Bogart system does.

[Mobilesport]

2oldman wrote:
I didn't find that history on the monitor.

Almost everybody has a smart phone and it ain't that hard to download a Victron app and so it aint that big of a deal especially considering what a good feature it is to be able to see your energy discharge history.

[2oldman]

I didn't find that history on the monitor.

[Mobilesport]

2oldman wrote:

Mobilesport wrote:
My bad , I should've said that it would be nice to have something that counts the amount of amp hours that have been used starting from when the battery was new.

Check out the Victron BMV-700.

It's bluetooth to your smartphone. My History page shows the Discharged energy = 1478kwh. That's over a million watt-hours. I'll have to get a precise date of installation before figuring out the daily discharge.

Yeah , I've had my eye on them Victons , i didn't want to pay $200 for the Victron and so I bought a Kisae capacity monitor instead for $40 , The Kisae works good for me , I'm not really into the smart phone or Bluetooth portions of the Victron but I really like how your Victron shows you the history of discharged energy , nice , really nice.
Can you pull up that history info right on the Victron monitor or can the info only be seen on a smart phone/computer?

[CA_Traveler]

Gjac wrote:

CA Traveler wrote:

Gjac wrote:
I think as others have said battery life is more that cycles of charging. I think most batteries die from sulfation from insufficient charging, at the other end of the spectrum is plate shedding from over charging which does not get talked about on here often. For this reason I don't keep mine plugged in all the time but recharge in shallow cycles 10-20% but equalize and desulfate several times a year.

Overcharging is certainly a factor.

From many posts it appears to me that over/under charging is mainly a result of inexpensive chargers. Of course they cost less and are great for the salesman to point out what a great battery charger this fantastic rig has...

I am not sure how it works exactly, the lower the voltage the less the chemical reaction and the less plate shedding occurs, having said that any amount of charging produces a chemical reaction and lead is shredded from the plates. If you charge your batteries when they are at 80% SOC 6V GC batteries should be good for 4000 cycles if you charge when they are fully discharged about 700 cycles and at 50% SOC maybe about 1600 cycles. So you can see it is not linear function, the knee of the curve is between 50-60% SOC. I dry camp 90% of the time so I can't fully charge until I have an electric site or come home. I guess the real question is which will make the battery last longer shallow charge SOC cycles, an automatic battery float charger, or a constant float charger of 13.2-13.6 v set on a timer. There are a lot of other variables like temperature and the algorithms that these various "smart chargers" use.

Everything I've read indicates that the lower and longer a flooded/AGM battery is discharged the shorter the life which seems to match your experience.

My Magnum ME2012 is a 5 stage charger that has excellent charging algorithms. Somehow it maintains the battery voltage and amps when charging regardless of house loads. This assumes that the draw is less than it's 100A rating. I don't know how it accomplishes this since it has no battery information except temperature. It should have a battery voltage probe but then Monaco didn't use Magnum's installation guidelines.

When the battery is fully charged and house loads are small for several hours then stage 4 occurs and charging is on standby and remains there until until charging is needed.

AFAIC The charging algrorithms are excellent.

[2oldman]

Mobilesport wrote:
My bad , I should've said that it would be nice to have something that counts the amount of amp hours that have been used starting from when the battery was new.

Check out the Victron BMV-700.

It's bluetooth to your smartphone. My History page shows the Discharged energy = 1478kwh. That's over a million watt-hours. I'll have to get a precise date of installation before figuring out the daily discharge.

[Mobilesport]

Mobilesport wrote:
It would be nice to have something that counts how many times you have cycled your battery to get a ballpark idea of how much life they have left.
Just a thought

My bad , I should've said that it would be nice to have something that counts the amount of amp hours that have been used starting from when the battery was new.

For example
My battery specs
Battleborn
BB10012 Specifications:
Lifetime Capacity: 300,000 Amp-hours

So estimated Lifetime capacity of my battery 300,000 amp-hours.
Let's say if i had I counter and it said I used 100000 amp hours.

I would have a ballpark idea that i'm probably going to get another 200,000 amp hours.

The built in battery management system won't allow overcharging , it won't allow the voltage to get too low , plus with a manual battery charger I shut it down when my soc % reaches around 100% so it doesn't over charge , .
Getting to 100% is extremely fast.
could even add a shutdown timer to the charger if concerned but I haven't needed it.

[Gjac]

CA Traveler wrote:

Gjac wrote:
I think as others have said battery life is more that cycles of charging. I think most batteries die from sulfation from insufficient charging, at the other end of the spectrum is plate shedding from over charging which does not get talked about on here often. For this reason I don't keep mine plugged in all the time but recharge in shallow cycles 10-20% but equalize and desulfate several times a year.

Overcharging is certainly a factor.

From many posts it appears to me that over/under charging is mainly a result of inexpensive chargers. Of course they cost less and are great for the salesman to point out what a great battery charger this fantastic rig has...

I am not sure how it works exactly, the lower the voltage the less the chemical reaction and the less plate shedding occurs, having said that any amount of charging produces a chemical reaction and lead is shredded from the plates. If you charge your batteries when they are at 80% SOC 6V GC batteries should be good for 4000 cycles if you charge when they are fully discharged about 700 cycles and at 50% SOC maybe about 1600 cycles. So you can see it is not linear function, the knee of the curve is between 50-60% SOC. I dry camp 90% of the time so I can't fully charge until I have an electric site or come home. I guess the real question is which will make the battery last longer shallow charge SOC cycles, an automatic battery float charger, or a constant float charger of 13.2-13.6 v set on a timer. There are a lot of other variables like temperature and the algorithms that these various "smart chargers" use.

[2oldman]

naturist wrote:
would be nice to have some kind of indicator to suggest how long before (computer) replacement will be required, it appears nobody knows how to do that, yet.

They can't figure out how to get rid of "plugged in, not charging."

[CA_Traveler]

Gjac wrote:
I think as others have said battery life is more that cycles of charging. I think most batteries die from sulfation from insufficient charging, at the other end of the spectrum is plate shedding from over charging which does not get talked about on here often. For this reason I don't keep mine plugged in all the time but recharge in shallow cycles 10-20% but equalize and desulfate several times a year.

Overcharging is certainly a factor.

From many posts it appears to me that over/under charging is mainly a result of inexpensive chargers. Of course they cost less and are great for the salesman to point out what a great battery charger this fantastic rig has...

[Lwiddis]

Since my (everyone’s?) depth of discharge is different every day, who is to say I’ve used a full cycle on any given day? Can’t “count” that.

[Gjac]

I think as others have said battery life is more that cycles of charging. I think most batteries die from sulfation from insufficient charging, at the other end of the spectrum is plate shedding from over charging which does not get talked about on here often. For this reason I don't keep mine plugged in all the time but recharge in shallow cycles 10-20% but equalize and desulfate several times a year.

[CA_Traveler]

Doesn't seem practical to me. What's a battery cycle? 20% or 40% and for how long before recharging, etc. Many variable come into play.

Instead measure the battery capacity when new and then say once a year to see where they are at which can help determine replacement. But determining when they will fail requires a crystal ball.

I have a battery monitor but don't track the house battery history. And it was the chassis batteries that failed since 2011. In 2011 all of the batteries failed load testing no doubt due to neglect by the prior owner. He passed and no history during those 2 years.

[deltabravo]

A Victron BMV-712 will track battery cycles

You can also use the Victron Connect app on a smart phone / table to see it remotely.

The above video doesn't show the app though.