Lead acid batteries needs cell balancing just as much as lithium ones. Lithium shows its displeasure fairly well when overcharged. Lead on the other hand just turns its battery acid/water into H2 and O2 for a nice explosive mix. But where Lead acid cells really get unhappy is over discharging them, since the buildup of lead sulfide takes more room than the lead base metal itself. When this layer gets sufficiently thick, it starts flaking off. For wet cells, it accumulates at the bottom, for gel cells the flakes gets stuck in the gel and slowly wander to the bottom, in either case, it isn't contributing to the capacity of the cell anymore. And since the cell gets progressively smaller, then it gets faster to reach this point the next time around. Eventually the cell is more or less dead. As long as it isn't flaking off, ie not going bellow about 1.85 volts per cell (or 11.1 volts for a 12 volt battery), the battery lasts practically for ever. As long as one remembers to top up the water every couple of years. Though, most times all the cells aren't exactly equal in size, even from the factory. So one will have to stop discharging it a bit earlier. Though, some people just continue down to 10 volts for a 12 volt battery and think nothing of it. (Lead acid cells have a very very flat discharge curve, being full at about 2.1 volts and empty at 1.8 or so. Making cell balancing a fair bit harder.) Though, 12 volt batteries like this don't have any balancing on their 6 cells, so there is that... But at least balancing the 4 sets of batteries is a start. Then there is the, "maintenance free" Lead acid ones, be it sealed ones or gel ones, they both technically are just worse off due to progressively drying out with every overcharge one applies to them. This degrades their performance and capacity over time, since the reaction needs water to happen. One can though argue that lithium is better, but it isn't true in a lot of applications. Lead acid cells are far cheaper per kw/h, loves being fully charged. Lead is typically worse in regards to prolonged power output, one needs about 2-3x more capacity compared to lithium, but this is more about the cell structure in the battery itself rather than a side effect of the difference chemistries. (Peak power output haven't been all that interesting for lead acid cells after all.) For UPS applications, Lithium is frankly a waste of resources that could be better utilized elsewhere. A larger installation could use glass cells and with proper maintenance and operation it can last decades. And Lead acid cells are mostly tortured since why fix a system that isn't obviously broken.... I though think it is impressive that lead cells can be put through hell and still last a good few cycles. While most other rechargeable batteries blows up.
@@MyPlayHouse Battery storage is an interesting topic, just like servers, and installing windows. Though, would be interesting to see a bank made of individual lead acid cells, not that these are easy to source in the slightest.
I have been using the HA02 balancers on my 48v battery array for over ten years. They do extend the life of pack about 1 year. The harder the balancer has to work, the warmer the HA02 units get. Not hot, just noticably warmer to touch. When batteries are in balance the balancer is cool to touch, same a ambient temp surroundings. Checking the balancers warmth is a quick and simple way to get an early warning to a battery with excessive leakage current. With early detection you can avoid overvoltage charging on other series batteries which will eventually destroy the whole series stack. HA02 has switching inductors for balancing. The smaller 24v version are just capacitor transfer type. I have seen new model with BT reporting which should be better monitoring.
Each battery contains six cells. If each battery was provided with a separate additive such as lithium, the lifespan would increase by four years in the batteries. One cell always disables the rest.
Individually charge each battery, best way to bring back improperly managed batteries. then put them on the balancer, isolate each bank... for a week or so... and monitor each bank...a bad battery will make that one bank drop more voltage than the others.
one thing i could suggest before adding the equalizer like maybe mark the suspected bad batt with a b? or bad? so ya know which one could be on its way to failure
I'm using two of them on my power bank, and i use it mostly to keep n eye on the balance and see what's left in them, I use lithium LiPeP04 because they don't boil n make dangerous fumes like acid batteries, so far it's bin balanced since it's bin hooked up
Yikes there's a nasty high frequency in most of this video. Very sharp and piercing sound. May want to run any other videos you take near that equip through an audio filter to filter out near 12,000 - 12,400 hz . Seems to float around that area in most of the clips. Used an FFT plot to figure out what the freq was.
I'm a bit unsure about the utility of trying to balance batteries consisting of six cells each. Those individual cells are likely the ones that would need to be balanced. In the old days, even six volt batteries (with 3 cells) were checked cell by cell using acid density meters, as well as a visual evaluation of the acid level. If a cell showed lower liquid level (not a quarter of an inch above the top of the plates), you would add distilled water. The idea was that a cell with low liquid level under-used its plate area or over stressed the remaining area and cooked the water. Which meant further drop of the liquid level and more loss of active plate area. With the introduction of sealed or gel cells, this original "balancing act" became forgotten art, but I still feel you cannot really balance a 48 V battery in chunks of 6 series connected cells.
hot gell =dead, my condolences, I lost my first bank 2 years ago, I got the same units and they have done good job, 2 years in they are well balanced! It takes a couple days to balance, as they can only move 1 amp irl, or in China numbers 10Amps lol My bank is flooded, so I can gauge cell health by water consumption, and you can track it by where the current is going from the eq (if you can hear in the range, you can hear the whine of it working) I loath gells, they're like a clingy needy animal with no ability to care for its self, Flooded is like a sturdy bull, can tack accidents and handle abuse better, and are servicible
out of curiosity did this end up being a useful worth while device this far in? does it work well still? toying with solar security camera trailer at work
first, thanks for responding to pretty much every question I've ever asked:P... I think 2 trailers are both going to end up with new sets of batteries(trailers were bought and no one seems to have known what they were doing or had time to setting things up properly??** crossing my fingers, knocking on wood/etc:P).... any clue on if the 24v variant will work with 8x 12v 140Ah~(Group 31 I believe, similar style to what is in this video) in a 24v configuration; I think 8 12v batteries in a 24v configuration is a bit strange but it's what I have to work with for the moment(inverter/etc are all 24v) Thanks!
The battery balancer looks very nice :-D I hope it only charges low batterys to bring them up to a standard and does not discharge a battery to bring it down. That would be a waste of your valuable solar power :-( I know nothing about the charging plan, i'm ignorant (No supprise lol).
The Little Menace has had a bunch of repairs the last few days,, the red/green LED on top of the charging station,, the green leg of the LED had rusted away,, that was a though error to find. and the "lift" sensor on the Menace,, was out of order,, it is a magnet, and it was pointing the wrong way,, and some rubber shock absorbers thingies had come lose,, took over a week to figure it all out,, it is running as I type. :-)
i just got my HC02 and used it charging on 6volt batteries, 12volt system, i had 2 batteries very low, so hooked the low batteries and the high batteries to the equalizer and my first impression is outstanding! higher voltage than I've had on this old bank in years, I'll see how it plays out on the discharge cycle, but, it's very encouraging now!!! thank you! @@MyPlayHouse
measuring voltage with "just about" as a measurement unit? When you're talking about differences between cell voltages and balancing, "just about" is a horrible unit of measure.
HI yzf yamahas My channel is English, and to make sure as many as possible, can also enjoy the comments, they are also English. Please keep to English. Thank you for watching! :-)
they are supposed to get hot bugger me sideways i wish you would read and learn who ever taught you all this was a thick as a plank then you sound like it needs more waltage what's a waltage :P
![Lifeboat Conversion Ep41: Why I'm changing over from Victron to a generic battery bank balancer [4K]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/H0IapMQPoJA/mqdefault.jpg)
![Lifeboat Conversion Ep41: Why I'm changing over from Victron to a generic battery bank balancer [4K]](/img/tr.png)
Lead acid batteries needs cell balancing just as much as lithium ones.
Lithium shows its displeasure fairly well when overcharged. Lead on the other hand just turns its battery acid/water into H2 and O2 for a nice explosive mix.
But where Lead acid cells really get unhappy is over discharging them, since the buildup of lead sulfide takes more room than the lead base metal itself. When this layer gets sufficiently thick, it starts flaking off.
For wet cells, it accumulates at the bottom, for gel cells the flakes gets stuck in the gel and slowly wander to the bottom, in either case, it isn't contributing to the capacity of the cell anymore. And since the cell gets progressively smaller, then it gets faster to reach this point the next time around. Eventually the cell is more or less dead.
As long as it isn't flaking off, ie not going bellow about 1.85 volts per cell (or 11.1 volts for a 12 volt battery), the battery lasts practically for ever. As long as one remembers to top up the water every couple of years. Though, most times all the cells aren't exactly equal in size, even from the factory. So one will have to stop discharging it a bit earlier. Though, some people just continue down to 10 volts for a 12 volt battery and think nothing of it. (Lead acid cells have a very very flat discharge curve, being full at about 2.1 volts and empty at 1.8 or so. Making cell balancing a fair bit harder.)
Though, 12 volt batteries like this don't have any balancing on their 6 cells, so there is that... But at least balancing the 4 sets of batteries is a start.
Then there is the, "maintenance free" Lead acid ones, be it sealed ones or gel ones, they both technically are just worse off due to progressively drying out with every overcharge one applies to them. This degrades their performance and capacity over time, since the reaction needs water to happen.
One can though argue that lithium is better, but it isn't true in a lot of applications.
Lead acid cells are far cheaper per kw/h, loves being fully charged. Lead is typically worse in regards to prolonged power output, one needs about 2-3x more capacity compared to lithium, but this is more about the cell structure in the battery itself rather than a side effect of the difference chemistries. (Peak power output haven't been all that interesting for lead acid cells after all.)
For UPS applications, Lithium is frankly a waste of resources that could be better utilized elsewhere.
A larger installation could use glass cells and with proper maintenance and operation it can last decades.
And Lead acid cells are mostly tortured since why fix a system that isn't obviously broken....
I though think it is impressive that lead cells can be put through hell and still last a good few cycles. While most other rechargeable batteries blows up.
Hi Today on the Bench
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
@@MyPlayHouse Battery storage is an interesting topic, just like servers, and installing windows.
Though, would be interesting to see a bank made of individual lead acid cells, not that these are easy to source in the slightest.
Mannn.,... you are a legend.
Thank you for sharing this great way to extend the life of your battery pack.
Hi Larry Bell
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
I have been using the HA02 balancers on my 48v battery array for over ten years. They do extend the life of pack about 1 year. The harder the balancer has to work, the warmer the HA02 units get. Not hot, just noticably warmer to touch. When batteries are in balance the balancer is cool to touch, same a ambient temp surroundings.
Checking the balancers warmth is a quick and simple way to get an early warning to a battery with excessive leakage current. With early detection you can avoid overvoltage charging on other series batteries which will eventually destroy the whole series stack.
HA02 has switching inductors for balancing. The smaller 24v version are just capacitor transfer type.
I have seen new model with BT reporting which should be better monitoring.
Hi RCin Fla
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Each battery contains six cells. If each battery was provided with a separate additive such as lithium, the lifespan would increase by four years in the batteries. One cell always disables the rest.
Individually charge each battery, best way to bring back improperly managed batteries. then put them on the balancer, isolate each bank... for a week or so... and monitor each bank...a bad battery will make that one bank drop more voltage than the others.
Hi bryzabone
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
I only have 2 batteries in my bank and going to do this, hopefully tomorrow ....
Excellent descrirption. I am going to get two for my two strings.
Hi Ben Kanobe
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Thank you. Great video.
I lost 12 12v/105Ah battery because i hadn't the little box. I buy it immediatly.
Hi Frederic BENARD
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
one thing i could suggest before adding the equalizer like maybe mark the suspected bad batt with a b? or bad? so ya know which one could be on its way to failure
Hi nathaniel greene
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
have a good weekend !! nice gear, hope it works out now !!
Hi david vantongerloo
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
can it be chained ? eg : alim ---> 1st load balancer ---> 4 chanels with 4 load balancer for 16 batteries ?
1 to 4 .. 4 to 16.
There is a way to link them up,, by overlapping two equalizers,, so with 2 you can do 7batteryes
@@MyPlayHouse ok, thank you :)
Crazy side of myself made me order a IBM System x3755 M3 and some 16-core Opterons :) I'll tell about my experiences when it arrives.
Oh boy … i hope it’s not bad
@@Ahmed-gm8li I hope it isn't bad... but propably one of the nicest "budget" 64-core servers. (It's not really budget)
That is a lot of cores,, in a M3 :-)
@@MyPlayHouse Yup, finally enough cores for my usage on one single server.
I'm using two of them on my power bank, and i use it mostly to keep n eye on the balance and see what's left in them, I use lithium LiPeP04 because they don't boil n make dangerous fumes like acid batteries, so far it's bin balanced since it's bin hooked up
Hi 808pathfinder
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
So thin cables between batteries. Does it work???? I am not talking about cables to the balancer. Is it passive or active balancer?
The balancers are very good,, but the batteries was not to be saved.. to fare gone.
Yikes there's a nasty high frequency in most of this video. Very sharp and piercing sound.
May want to run any other videos you take near that equip through an audio filter to filter out near 12,000 - 12,400 hz . Seems to float around that area in most of the clips. Used an FFT plot to figure out what the freq was.
Interesting,, my speakers might not be good enough,, or I am to old and deaf.
It is the balancer making that noise. I have one and I've been trying to figure out if there's a version that is quiet
I'm a bit unsure about the utility of trying to balance batteries consisting of six cells each. Those individual cells are likely the ones that would need to be balanced.
In the old days, even six volt batteries (with 3 cells) were checked cell by cell using acid density meters, as well as a visual evaluation of the acid level. If a cell showed lower liquid level (not a quarter of an inch above the top of the plates), you would add distilled water. The idea was that a cell with low liquid level under-used its plate area or over stressed the remaining area and cooked the water. Which meant further drop of the liquid level and more loss of active plate area.
With the introduction of sealed or gel cells, this original "balancing act" became forgotten art, but I still feel you cannot really balance a 48 V battery in chunks of 6 series connected cells.
The Li-ion batteries with 14 in series also needs balancing.
hot gell =dead, my condolences, I lost my first bank 2 years ago, I got the same units and they have done good job, 2 years in they are well balanced! It takes a couple days to balance, as they can only move 1 amp irl, or in China numbers 10Amps lol My bank is flooded, so I can gauge cell health by water consumption, and you can track it by where the current is going from the eq (if you can hear in the range, you can hear the whine of it working) I loath gells, they're like a clingy needy animal with no ability to care for its self, Flooded is like a sturdy bull, can tack accidents and handle abuse better, and are servicible
Hi Fook Ewe
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
I thought you said in the video it worked for 12v? Link say from 24v? Thanks
Hi @practicaltactical1336
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
I would love the same for 60 volts if I can find it.
Even the 48v one here is kind of rare,,, only a very few models available.
out of curiosity did this end up being a useful worth while device this far in? does it work well still? toying with solar security camera trailer at work
They work really well,, but I got them to late,, my batteries was done :-(
first, thanks for responding to pretty much every question I've ever asked:P... I think 2 trailers are both going to end up with new sets of batteries(trailers were bought and no one seems to have known what they were doing or had time to setting things up properly??** crossing my fingers, knocking on wood/etc:P).... any clue on if the 24v variant will work with 8x 12v 140Ah~(Group 31 I believe, similar style to what is in this video) in a 24v configuration; I think 8 12v batteries in a 24v configuration is a bit strange but it's what I have to work with for the moment(inverter/etc are all 24v) Thanks!
The battery balancer looks very nice :-D
I hope it only charges low batterys to bring them up to a standard and does not discharge a battery to bring it down.
That would be a waste of your valuable solar power :-(
I know nothing about the charging plan, i'm ignorant (No supprise lol).
I hope they do both :-)
these are an active transfer type, they consume a micro wat or so energy but the bulk is transferred tot he lower cell
Maybe you could open one of the boxes and show whats inside?
There did not seam any way to open it,, I think it is one big block
Morten - the one question the world is wanting an answer to is : what is the status of the Little Menace out in your garden? 🧐
The Little Menace has had a bunch of repairs the last few days,, the red/green LED on top of the charging station,, the green leg of the LED had rusted away,, that was a though error to find. and the "lift" sensor on the Menace,, was out of order,, it is a magnet, and it was pointing the wrong way,, and some rubber shock absorbers thingies had come lose,, took over a week to figure it all out,, it is running as I type. :-)
@@MyPlayHouse Cool. Are we lucky enough to get a video on the issues with it and your fixes?
May I ask can you use one for 8 6v batteries in a 48v battery bank. The question I am asking is can you set it for 2 6v batteries to make it 12v?
Yes you can do that,, balancing the batteries, becomes even more important.
no, but it would work with 4 x 6 in a 24v system
Why not use all in parallel and add a shunt to every battery, so you see when a battery does something the others don't do?
That is also kind of a complicated setup.
Nice video thank you:)
Hi Ahmed
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
How do you connect your battery equalizer on 4s2p battery bank?
Uhh I have no tricks to that.. sorry
could it be used on 6 volt batteries also?
I do really not remember,, you will have to look in the manual.
are you still happy with the equalizers operation? well worth the investment?@@MyPlayHouse
i just got my HC02 and used it charging on 6volt batteries, 12volt system, i had 2 batteries very low, so hooked the low batteries and the high batteries to the equalizer and my first impression is outstanding! higher voltage than I've had on this old bank in years, I'll see how it plays out on the discharge cycle, but, it's very encouraging now!!! thank you! @@MyPlayHouse
I just bought a battery equalizer ha02 but is noisy hight pitch noise very annoying anybody with same problem?
Yes,, mine also had a high pitch.
@My PlayHouse any solution they all do that or just some
My victron balancers are silient
👍
Hi assetto racing channel
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
play house is actually a data mining house 🤔
Well with Chia,, I am a farmer :-)
Something in your basement is generating a high pitched noise, making it hard to watch. :(
That’s Morten and without him we’d be watching a silent movie! 🤣🤣
That first equalizer,, does that!
measuring voltage with "just about" as a measurement unit? When you're talking about differences between cell voltages and balancing, "just about" is a horrible unit of measure.
Well if it was off by any important amount,, I would say it more precisely.
no RGB... no watercooling ^^
As it should be. RGB is tacky and water-cooling is generally a waste of money.
@@kuhrd my grand'ma always say : never water with electricity.... she was right :)
No
@@MyPlayHouse and still no disco ball in the DC :( baaaad ^^
beeping at everyone?😢
Sometimes over voltage and sometimes under voltages :-/
i turn mine off at the wall every night never needed battery's !
Hi Netty Voyager
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Vaut mieux prendre du victron que du alieexpres
HI yzf yamahas
My channel is English, and to make sure as many as possible, can also enjoy the comments, they are also English.
Please keep to English.
Thank you for watching! :-)
they are supposed to get hot bugger me sideways i wish you would read and learn who ever taught you all this was a thick as a plank then you sound like it needs more waltage what's a waltage :P
Hi Netty Voyager
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Second
Hi technic masters
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
First
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@@MyPlayHouse I love it how you say and i quote "Again" it just shows how much I pay attention hehehe
I think this is not your first time, being first,, so I change it a little ;-)