Help: initial charge on new Crown 330ah batteries

[hammick]

I have a couple new 6v Crown deep cycle 330ah deep cycle batteries. I want to do an initial charge on them. I borrowed an old school Schumacher charger from a friend that is completely manual. It has 50a, 10a and 2a settings for 12v and just 50a for 6v.

Right now I have the batteries in series at the 12v 10a setting. The voltage at the terminals is at about 14.7v. If I switch to the 50a setting the voltage rises to over 16v. What should I do. I would like to see the voltage at the 10a setting get over 15v.

Basically I would like to equalize these batteries for an initial charge. Can I do this with this charger?

Thanks.

FYI charger is Schumacher SE-2158:

Charger manual

[MEXICOWANDERER]

As I attempted to explain several times, Trojan application engineers have a rote sheet tacked the wall od their cubicle. They will answer only certain questions and those will be performed with xerox caliber rote.

But HEY! WAIT A FREAKIN' MINUTE!

You suppose CARBON TECHNOLOGY has zero to do with battery construction and everything to do with carbon FOOTPRINT

Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzword?

Green yeah right. Drive on I-5 past the I-605 interchange and look toward the southeast. The 116KV powerlines, pallets of junk batteries and massive lead scrubbers on the roof be green technology. Youbknow the shade. Open your wallet and gaze at the color of the banknotes.

Tarlick geneology no doubt is dominant today. It amounts to Bury and Smother in BS. God am I glad I am well separated from that foul smelling insanity. Years used to pass without a salesman knocking down my door. Wonder if they had an underground gravevine?

CARBON TECHNOLOGY har har har. Gotta admit I remain unaware of it.

[landyacht318]

I Emailed Trojan about their J150 RE with the fancy green sticker and the T-1275, and was told the batteries are the same internally.

BUt they couldn't be bothered with explaining why they had a 14.1 to 14.7v Absorption recommendation on the RE batteries but 14.8 on the others.

I suspect the whole green sticker RE thing is just marketing to appeal to the renewable energy market. IF one brand has a RE battery, then they better all have one. Order up those stickers!! and raise the price.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

Trojan is not inclined to toss turkeys from a helicopter to shock and awe the gullible. I am totally unaware of their claim and their technology for using carbon. But the alternative energy market is unforgiving as far as gimmicks go. I cannot imagine Trojan doing a " Dewey Wins Over Truman". The stakes for them are too high. Just my personal opinion derived from a hunch.

[BFL13]

If the Stanley "recondition" is the same as the Vector's (sounds like it) you can run the R and charge at the same time. The R does not raise voltage.

In fact Mr Wiz has/had a charger that does R that you leave on all the time while the batteries are discharged and charged. He thought it did some good ISTR.

If you need to shut off the charger at 10a because the voltage might get too high overnight, you can still leave that R running no problem.

There is some controversy about the pulse type R's efficacy, but it can't hurt and might work, so why not?

You can restart the 10a first thing and keep an eye on voltage and SG now that it is moving up, or just return the Crowns and get the Trojans if that is what you really want, and they will let you.

Mena on here, has L-16s and has no trouble getting them to 100%, so it seems they are not "stubborn" like some batts are. They do need extra attention so they don't stratify, being so tall.

[hammick]

Mex I am going to drink a couple Manhattans and then read your post again. Might translate better then.

Seriously though I looked into a Megawatt when I put the GC2 batteries on my trailer. Should have bought one then. I could definitely use it now.

Good news is the voltage is rising on the 10a charge. It's at 14.80v SG has gone up a little. I'm going to let it go for a couple more hours and see what I get. The Stanley charger can't put out the voltage the batteries need. It will be going back to Walmart.

Now who has opinions on the Trojan RE batteries. Need to make my decision tomorrow whether I order them or tell them I need eight Crown CR330s fresh from the factory.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

One will glare at the other and intimidate it.

"There you go sir! 85% of your change due, back."

"Sir, 85% of your engine is tuned. Finished. Pay the cashier."

Shudda stayed in the states putting out Megawatts and four hour spring-wound timers. Once a failure chargers wrings it's hands a few different tweak trials of the timer dials will get a person (battery) mighty close to 100%.

Ooooooo lookie a booble in one of the cells! Yank the power cord! Call a Hazmat team! BOILING BATTERY!

[hammick]

Anything wrong with using both chargers at the same time. The manual one on 10a charge and the Stanley on recondition mode?

[red31]

push battery recondition for a 24 hrs 'recondition' cycle

'Battery recondition sends a series of electrical pulses to break up the crystalline form of lead sulfate and turn these chemicals into
useful battery electrolytes. The process will stop automatically after 24 hours. To stop the process sooner, press the battery recondition button a second time. More than 24 hours may be needed to restore performance on
some batteries. If so, repeat the process

[hammick]

Mex I do have a 15a charger. It's a Stanley but its full auto. No manual setting. I have it on the batteries right now and it's showing 7.1 amps and 14.53 volts.

I left this charger on them all last night and it never went to 100%. It tops out at about 80-85% charged.

[hammick]

Do you guys have any thoughts on the Carbon technology in the Trojan RE batteries. Supposed to minimize sufation in solar setups where the batteries don't always get fully charged. Marketing gimmicks or useful stuff?

[MEXICOWANDERER]

Scooze me after reading all the above I'm a little unsteady on my butt.

A conditioning charge is the same thing as a top charge except the name titles it for the first time. Crown is going to tell you the same thing as you are going to read...

Batteries sit and they discharge. The weather isn't freezing and those are 5% antimony batteries. Count on 7-10% self discharge from the moment they are charged with electrolyte.

Your charger will work fine for THIS job and for Top Charging down the line. But it is too small for equalization duty which will require fifteen constant amps all the way to 16.0 volts.

Forget everything else but the 10-amp setting.

What you are after is to see AMPERAGE slowly slump to FIVE PERCENT of total amp hour capacity. But your charger is NOT the recommended Fifteen Amps it is ten amps so a little calculus is in order to arrive at an algorithim derived alternative. I will not bore you...

When voltage increases to fourteen point EIGHT stop the music. Let the batteries sit for four hours. When you dip the next time find the weak sister cell and note its position. You will use this cell for the life of the batteries. As you terminated the charge were the cells happily bubbling away?

Did gravity increase? Some vendors adjust gravity others do not. It is likely but not certain your batteries are 1.275 standard.

You need to straighten out your charger issues. Unless you have solar voltaics and a controller that deliver 16 amps at 16 volts you will damage your batteries through neglect.

I invite you to cut and paste this and email it to Crown for verification.

Best of fortune. Crown makes good off-grid batteries

[hammick]

Voltage is down to 15.98v at the 50a charge setting. Does that mean the sulfate is breaking up?

I will check the SG again after another 30 minutes at 50a.

[hammick]

mena661 wrote:
How long have you been letting them charge at the 10A setting?

Four hours at 10a. About 1 hour total at 50a. Overnight on the Stanley automatic 15a charger I bought at Walmart. They are clearly sulfated. They had 6.25v each when I got them.

At this point I am going to return all eight of the batteries. The initial 6 I brought home Wednesday were at 6.15v and one was at 6.13v. They are badly sulfated. You can see it on all six of the batteries looking at the cells with a flashlight. On the two that were at 6.25v you cannot see sulfation on the cells but clearly they are sulfated by the fact that I cannot get them fully charged.

At this point I am just experimenting for experience. They are going back tomorrow and I will order eight of the Trojan L-16RE-A batteries. Will cost me about $400 more but worth it.

I'm guessing they will let them sit on their industrial chargers for a few days and they will be fine for a customer that just throws them in a floor machine.

[BFL13]

16.3 is ok IMO as long as it stays around there while SG rises. If it shoots up past 16.3 shut it off quick!

You can tell it is too much when the electrolyte comes up out of the caps and runs over the tops of the batteries. 😞

You might have "stubborn" batteries there like landyacht's "Screwy 31" if you followed that thread.

The solar controller will give you more things to try to keep them going daily, but for now, you do want to get your "baseline SG" as your future SG target. 1.275 seems a bit low to me where I am used to 1.285-95 range on my 6s after being equalized. However, I may be overdoing that and losing plate.

It is a nuisance when they need 15+ volts to get full and that happens on solar around supper time when you need the inverter to run some 120v things, but the inverter won't run at over 15v alarm off. Who invented Rving anyway?? 🙂