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Small Cabin Forum / Off-Grid Living / Can dead deep cycle batteries break a charger?
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ackray
Member
# Posted: 10 Jul 2013 07:37
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The setup is ten golf cart batteries in five twelve volt banks. For a little over three years now they have been in place and working. Over the last six months the reserve capacity has been dropping to almost nothing,

At this point they are dead, being run down to close to ten volts overnight and so on. House load is less than 300 watts at use times and under 50 watts at off use times.

The first charger to go was a powermax 100 amp charger. the 6000 watt inverter charger has also developed problems.

Last night I wired in a smaller powermax forty-five amp charger and within five minutes it lit up, smoked sparked and died.

Any ideas on what is going wrong?

Thanks!

Dillio187
Member
# Posted: 10 Jul 2013 12:25
Reply 


you have too many parallel battery banks, and a couple of the 12V banks are probably dead. Have you checked fluid and SG on all of them? I'm guessing you have a couple pairs that were supporting most of the loads, and are now cooked.

ackray
Member
# Posted: 10 Jul 2013 13:06
Reply 


Thanks Dillio187.

The batteries are definitely gone. Being replaced this week. My question is if dead or shorted batteries can damage the chargers and inverters that are connected to this type of battery bank.

Has this happened to anyone else?

Thanks again!

Dillio187
Member
# Posted: 10 Jul 2013 21:39
Reply 


it certainly could if there was a dead short which overloaded the charger. I've read about it happening quite a bit with setups with a lot of parallel batts.

groingo
Member
# Posted: 10 Jul 2013 23:46
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A collapsed of broken battery plate can cause a direct short, could have been part of the problem.

toyota_mdt_tech
Member
# Posted: 11 Jul 2013 00:53
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You have burnt out the diode (rectifier) and it can be fixed. I used to fix automotive battery chargers at my prior employer. Dont toss it just yet.

ackray
Member
# Posted: 13 Jul 2013 12:00
Reply 


Turned out to be the generator. Volts were good but the Hz were way off.

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