Hi again cousins,
I finally got a hygrometer to check specific gravity in my batteries. I couldn't find one in Bonaire, and after several tries finally found one in Curaçao....crazy.
I am at the dock now and on shore power. Here's what I did:
I let the battery bank get down to 24.1 V, turned on the Charles 60 amp smart charger and fully charged the batteries. Initially it put 58 A into the battery bank but within 30 minutes it was down to 35 A. After two hours it was down to less than 10 A. I left the charger on until the next day, it was at float voltage of the 26.5 V, one amp was going into the battery bank.
I checked voltage of the battery bank after letting two fridges run for 10 minutes, then turning off all 24 V equipment. The bank voltage was 25.8 V. I then disconnected all batteries from each other, and checked the individual voltage on each battery. All batteries were at 25.89 V +/- 0.04V. Every thing seems appropriate at this point, am I wrong about that?
I then checked specific gravity of all cells in all batteries. Each cell was at 1150 +/- 20. The hygrometer scale says they should be at >1260.
Soooo...is it likely that all batteries are bad to the exact same degree???? That seems unlikely unless they all came from the same run, and were filled with a bad electrolyte solution. Even then, for the first few weeks they were lasting almost 24 hours before they were down to a little above 24V, so that doesn't seem likely.
Is it likely that the hygrometer is bad? It's such a simple tool that doesn't seem likely either. There's no liquid in the float.
My battery monitor agrees with my multitester when reading bank voltage and amperage in the primary cables.
I'm stumped.
Any suggestions welcome.
Masha Danki from Curaçao.
Kent
SM243
Kristy