Why isn’t this at 100%

[Martynovo]

All sounds normal, load -no load ; as expected. What about the temperature? If battery is under 5 deg C, it will not charge, but, allow to discharge.

The 12.9v is the on load votage it would have recovered to at least 13.3v without the charger on.
you don't say what your charger is apart from being Victron or the amp hours of your batteries.
If you have 400ah of batteries and a 20 amp charger it would take an hour to put 5% back into the batteries, if the charger is running at full power, so in practice it would be a bit longer.

It's victron set to 30amp and batteries 2x100 ah. Been on over days. I'm going away on Tuesday for 2 weeks not in motorhome . If I haven't solved it I will take battery down to below 13v , take off ehu and just leave solar . It will be into see what B2B /MPPT takes it up to.

 

[Raul]

Temperature? Can you confirm the batteries are above 5 degC? If not, then that may be the charging pause till temperature rises sufficiently to allow charge.

 

[Martynovo]

Temperature? Can you confirm the batteries are above 5 degC? If not, then that may be the charging pause till temperature rises sufficiently to allow charge.

At this time 22.38 battery 9'C B2B 15'C . I'm in Cornwall! But is that a clue, why should B2B be so warm, it can't be working? Battery has 20watt heat pad at side not touching. B2B under a seat with open front and rear an external panel.

 

[Raul]

Temperature is relevant at the time of charge.
Maybe the heat pad takes most of b2b charge and very little gets to the battery or loads.

 

[Dall]

1. Have the batteries ever got to 100% without any solar power?

2. Can you post a current photo of the Votronic displays. I suspect the one in your first post was when solar was working given you say the battery hasn’t gone over 70% and the picture shows 91% and the solar at 14.4V

3. If you say the charger is on, then my guess is there is a blown fuse between the charger and leisure battery or the charger isn’t working (wrong settings?).

4. Have you got the Victron app on your phone so you can see the charger settings and current status?

5. As some else has said, if the temperature drops below about 5C the leisure batteries may not charge anyway.

"solar was working given you say the battery hasn’t gone over 70% and the picture shows 91% and the solar at 14.4V"


The voltage reading on the Votronic Solar meter is not the voltage produced by the Solar - it is the Leisure Battery voltage. In fact the solar meter is reporting no charge from the solar at all. There are two mppt controllers, only the bottom one is connected to the meter.
The Votronic charge controller shows the the LB is on charge and the SOC.
I am not sure what voltage the Sterling meter is showing, as this is 12.5v, could this be the Starter Battery voltage?
14.4v is quite high for a LifePO4 voltage. Is it possible that the cell OVP has triggered and switched the "charge" off in the battery? The mains charger may then be switched on and functioning, but not able to get any charge into the battery!

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[AdrianChen]

Could you post the shunt battery settings and the chargers battery settings?

 

[Dall]

Could you post the shunt battery settings and the chargers battery settings?

If available - the BMS settings too.

 

[Pausim]

At this time 22.38 battery 9'C B2B 15'C . I'm in Cornwall! But is that a clue, why should B2B be so warm, it can't be working? Battery has 20watt heat pad at side not touching. B2B under a seat with open front and rear an external panel.

I can’t see that 20W of heating doing much more than warming part of the outer case. I would have thought it would take for ever to affect the temperature at the core of the cells where it actually matters?

 

[AdrianChen]

At this time 22.38 battery 9'C B2B 15'C . I'm in Cornwall! But is that a clue, why should B2B be so warm, it can't be working? Battery has 20watt heat pad at side not touching. B2B under a seat with open front and rear an external panel.

Which B2B is it?

 

[Tony50]

I’ll give it a go, and unplug from mains if that doesn’t work, see if anything happens, got starter battery on a smart charger currently.

That's exactly what I do sometimes it stops charging, I switch off mains and wait 10 seconds and switch back on and it starts charging

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[Tude]

Dies the charger have a lithium profile, and is is set? Lithium has higher voltage than lead-acid. If a lead acid smart charger it may not yet be seeing voltage dropped low enough for it to come off float?

My lithium is 14.2v

 

[Tude]

Temperature is relevant at the time of charge.
Maybe the heat pad takes most of b2b charge and very little gets to the battery or loads.

Lithium won’t charge if it’s 0deg or lower but will discharge. Unless it has heat pad for charging

 

[Raul]

Lithium won’t charge if it’s 0deg or lower but will discharge. Unless it has heat pad for charging

Thats what I said earlier, post 29, and we try to find out why? Despite the charger being on.

 

[B-JandBella]

So I have 2 lithium batteries a battery master, b2b charger and lot of solar, the van is inside so the solar is not doing anything, but it’s on permanent hook up. When I first bought the van the panel used to say 100% charge

Forward on a couple of months and that same panel after being on hook up in my lock up hasn’t gone past 70% and after the mrs had the inverter on for something has dropped to 55% and doesn’t increase even though still on hook up.

If the leisure batteries aren’t getting to 100%
then I’m going to assume that the battery master won’t maintain my starter battery hence why it wouldn’t start the other week.

Why wont they charge back to full capacity, am I missing something? I’ve never had lithium before but can’t understand why they’re not showing as full.

Panel pic for reference


View attachment 998596

I keep mine on a trickle charge with a Ring 6A Charge and Maintain. When the van is not used and it keeps the batteries fully charged on a trickle. No chance of over charging and it can be used for either 12v or 6v.
Perfect for the winter time when batteries lose a lot of their life condition due to cold weather.
Used it now for well over year without any problems.
Cost to buy around £28.

 

[Speve]

On my 2000a victron multi plus when on hookup for more than a few days the multiplus puts 300a Fogstar Drift Pro battery into storage mode and will then top up to full charge once a week.

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[Clive Mott]

Your hookup is not working if you needed to run the inverter.

 

[Martynovo]

Your hookup is not working if you needed to run the inverter.

Inverter was used to take battery well below full and then use ehu to recharge as suggested by Lenny.
Made no difference. Battery back at 13.5v on shunt but now says 77% full. Using solar it goes higher when charging but each day it says percentage a little lower by the morning but not volts. I suspect tomorrow it will be 13.5v but saying 76 or 75% charge. Somehow the two victron elements, 30amp charger and shunt, just don't agree with each other.

 

[McLouis]

"solar was working given you say the battery hasn’t gone over 70% and the picture shows 91% and the solar at 14.4V"


The voltage reading on the Votronic Solar meter is not the voltage produced by the Solar - it is the Leisure Battery voltage. In fact the solar meter is reporting no charge from the solar at all. There are two mppt controllers, only the bottom one is connected to the meter.
The Votronic charge controller shows the the LB is on charge and the SOC.
I am not sure what voltage the Sterling meter is showing, as this is 12.5v, could this be the Starter Battery voltage?
14.4v is quite high for a LifePO4 voltage. Is it possible that the cell OVP has triggered and switched the "charge" off in the battery? The mains charger may then be switched on and functioning, but not able to get any charge into the battery!

I have the same Votronic charge controller. Maybe you have donr this already but if you toggle through the up arrow you should get the current going into the battery. This could give you any loads that are being drawn from the battery (turn off the charger and should go - ve) . The bord voltage is absolutely fine at 14.2V, giving 3.55V per cell which should get you to a full state of charge.

My Votronic shunt never quite reads as high as the BMS. But maybe only 10% out at most. Not wanting to state the obvious, do you actually know the battery capacity in Ah (it's not what it says on the tin) (My cells were purchased at 306Ah but actually deliver 333-335Ah) and has this been entered into the Votronic display?

I think it's been asked before but can you access the BMS and get the data? This can help you to determine the state of health and any odd settings. My J-K BMS had a sleep function set at a crazy high cell voltage which would shut down the bms.

Let me know how you get on.