How old and how many cycles has the batteries done? have you done a load test? take them to a battery place to check
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I have a 12v 4000w Changi inverter running off 3x200ah gel batteries. This covered my load shedding needs easily.
The past 2 days, the inverter has been giving low battery warnings after about an hour.
Nothing has change with the load.
I disconnected all the batteries and each one is showing 12.8 volts. I then connected the inverter to each battery separately without any load, but it does the same thing on each battery (i.e. inverter powers up, but then says that the battery is in the low 11 volts).
Any ideas as to what could be the issue?
How old and how many cycles has the batteries done? have you done a load test? take them to a battery place to check
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<<Confucius said>>
As a test one could also charge each battery to 14.3V and do another load test to see if it does not give a longer time on the same load before writing them off. With the LS it might just be that there is not enough time to recharge them to full.
This test charge to be done at no higher than 20A.
Last edited by ekkekan; 2022/05/21 at 11:56 PM.
<<Confucius said>>
For those 3 x 200ah batteries in parallel to fully charge the charge current needs to be around 60A. Check what the Changi charge current is.
The batteries are about 2 years old and I never run them beyond the 50% dod. I only run tvs, wifi, led lights and security system, so max 350watts during load shedding.
The battery charger is separate to the inverter. Its a 50amp 'smart' charger. If i connect the charger to the batteries, it doesn't charge as its picking up that the batteries are fully charged.
I've now put the inverter to each battery and ran seperate tests. The inverter initially reads 13.0v on the battery. As soon as a I run a 70watt load (tv and decoder), the voltage drops to 11.5 and alarms. Doing this on each of the 3 batteries.
Maybe the inverter is faulty?
Sounds like those batteries are shot if if it drops like that with such a small load, you can try to set the minimum voltage settings lower on inverter to see if you can get more usage out of them maybe?
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I connected the inverter to my car battery and ran the same load...it worked fine, so batteries are toast.
I need to still figure out whether I want to spend the money to move to 48v inverter and lithium batteries, so might just get 1x200ah gel to run wifi and some lights for now.
Where can I dispose of the these batteries (they are bloody heavy)?
Also check if that charger has an Equalization algorithm. Not good for Gel and Lithium.....
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<<Confucius said>>
Winter is a great leveler of batteries.
What brand were your 3x200ah gel batteries ?
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Last edited by ekkekan; 2022/05/22 at 10:01 AM.
<<Confucius said>>
I left the old ones at the dealer (no money for it) and bought a 300ah 12v gel battery.
Old batteries and new one are from Five Star.
Will use this one for now until I decide on lithium.
My cousin got a 10kva hybrid inverter with wifi plus 2x5kva lithium batteries from them for under R60k. I can probably live with a 5kva inverter and 1x5kva battery, so will be a lot cheaper for me.
Question - the lithium battery says 5kva 100ah. Does this mean that you can safely draw 100amp per hour from it and that it's capacity is also 100amps (5000w÷48volts) at 100% dod? So 2 of these batteries will give 200amps of usable power, but still at max 100amps per hour?
2x 100 Ah batteries in parallel will give you 200 Ah, yes.
Battery capacity is (may also be) stated in Wh or kWh (not kVA). Battery mfrs. state a recommend continuous discharge current and max. short term discharge current. This means that there will be a minimum recommended number of batteries needed depending on the size of the inverter. You cannot for example use just one (say) 3.5 kWh battery on a 3 or 5 kVA inverter, as the inverter's current draw will exceed the maximum rated discharge current of the battery.
As an example, for Pylontech batteries, Victron recommends 2x batteries for their 3 kVA 48 V inverters and 4x batteries for the 5 kVA 48 V models.
I would not discharge to 100% DOD though,
Last edited by An3s; 2022/05/22 at 06:18 PM.
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