It would be interesting if you could get the 9160 working to see how it behaves. Interesting on the controller chip. I had always assumed that the charger folks were programming their own specs into the chargers, but it looks like that one may have a lot already built in. I know very little about that kind of stuff, so could be way off. Are the PD units flash upgradable like some are?
I finished the latest test a couple of days ago, but held off a bit to let the PD discussion run without mixing, as I think it very interesting and could apply to quite a few people.
I took a wild guess and ran a 50% recharge at 14.6/13.6v with the return amp transition to float at 2 amps. I had run previous 50% tests at 14.3/13.3 and 14.6/13.3v with 1 amp setting for the transition. The two earlier tests showed that it took nearly the same amount of time to go from 2 amps of charging to 1 amp of charging, as the entire rest of cycle took. Roughly 6.5 hours to get to 2 hours, roughly 5.5 to get from 2 to 1 hour. I don't have a data logger, so it all running in and out to see what is going on, so not really accurate. Good enough for this, though, I think. Lifeline recommends using .5%C to transition in the literature, but when I talked to folks like Blue Sea in the past they thought if the batteries will go lower than that, it would be good to go lower, and that the battery manufacturers were recommending higher because that is where it will wind up as the batteries age. We can get to a little under .2%. The question for me is if the nearly double time at absorption is doing more harm or good.
The information and charts from Fullriver and Powerstream that I put up earlier led me to believe that there may be intent from the battery manufacturers to stop a little early and finish the charging of the last little bit with float to get down under the gassing voltage for the batteries for the extra hours.
The new test was to see if using the higher voltages and stopping earlier, would allow full charge in an overnight (periodic totally full charge) stop while on the road.
I caught the float transition at 2 amps this time, right at 6.75 hours, which is basically the same as I saw it at 2 amps on the earlier test, so consistent. 5.5 hours later (when it would have been done if left at 14.6v) the float amps were at .4 amps and 13.6v. I let it run overnight at the 13.6v without checking it, and 8 hours later it was at .2 amps and 13.6v. I know that totally full at 13.3v is consistently .1 amp, so I turned down the float voltage and turned on some lights to take off the surface charge of .3v. Let it settle for an hour and it was right at .1 amp, so totally full. Unfortunately, I was sleeping when the amps quit dropping, so I don't know when in 8 hours it actually was done
. It had been dropping by about .075 amps per hour since it went to float, so that would be about 3 hours to get to the .2amp from the .4 it was when last checked. I need to confirm just where that point is.
If the 3 hours is right, it shows that by doing the ending 1 amp of charge at float only changed that part of cycle by 55%, and the total cycle time by 25%, which is less than I expected, a bit more than I had hoped for.
How this fits into our real world camping is a huge "it depends". A 15 hour charge cycle is kind of right on the edge of what fits our "normal for us" stay time when we are at a full service campground after 3-6 days of offgrid. That would make it probably good most of the time. This was also based on a 50% recharge, which would be very big for us, I think (220ah), to need when we got to the campground. Even a relatively short drive with alternator at 175+amps is going to gets us to a much lower recovery needed, and the top off stays are usually timed so we are going between nice, longer, off grid, places, so there would certainly be some driving. After 3.25 hours in this test, the batteries were only accepting 15.8 amps with the 100 amp charger that had run at full output for only 1 hour, so even doubling the initial charge rate would only shorten that time by .5 hour to under 3 hours, though, but we save at least 3 hours of shore power cycle. At that point, the solar would be capable most of the time to continue the charging at that amp amount and less, so if we stop somewhere it still will be helping. The 3 hours saved on the shore charge cycle would make an overnight fillup pretty easy going to float early and letting it finish the charge.
Still a little early to say for sure, but it looks like letting the float finish things has no real downside other than time, and may have benefits by cutting the time in the gassing voltage area by about 45%. I do think that road settings and home settings will be different, though.
So back to the original subject of the discussion-settings-most likely
For us while on the road 14.6/13.6 with a 2 amp (.5%) return amp to float transition that will need 8-9 hours to finish to full
At home 14.3/13.3 with a 2 amp (.5%) return amp to float transition that will need longer to finish to full, but doesn't matter. I will also probably use the charger "silent" mode, once the batteries are brought to totally full. This is like the profile davydd now has in his ARV that shuts off after a time at float and then does a full charge cycle when the batteries reach a set voltage, which I will probably have at 12.7v or so.
The changes are all done on the remote panel and take less than a minute, so no big deal there.
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Linear Mode
