Always: Flies in my pudding

There's always SOMETHING...

The battery monitoring system has been acting whacky. It reports the last three batteries are continually in 'overcharge' state. The first battery (the added non-standard one) is reported as being 13.2V (which it is) while the others are at 13.4V (which they are) and that the second battery is at about 13.8V (which it isn't, more like 13.6V). Sounds like small differences I know but 0.1V is a big difference in terms of State Of Charge (SOC).

Add to which it almost always shows SOC at 100%, even when the batteries are half discharged. The current indicator shows random stuff and the temperature indication has been variable. We spent part of the afternoon re-routing wires to try and improve matters (assuming it's some kind of electromagnetic interferance problem) and putting in some quick-disconnects to make resetting the system easier. Attaching the sensor modules to the top of the batteries should help with the temp reading. We'll see how it goes.

Now add the fact the Battery Equalization system (BattEQ which is separate) has just been recalled by the manufacturer. Bummer. However this will be less of a loss than you might imagine since the large voltage difference between the first and second batteries causes it to freak out and say: "that difference is too big for me, I'm turning off" so it hasn't been all that much use anyway.

Brian Blocher has a new version of his VoltBlocher product out that is intended for Lead Acid 12V batteries. I'm going to see about getting a set of these and getting some modifications done to them to replace the BattEQ unit. More on this later, it's a pretty significant price/performance breakthrough on the battery management front.