Jump to content

Charging of domestic batteries


rowland al

Featured Posts

Just now, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

No thanks, I'm delighted with them both. Between them the tell me the state of charge of my batteries, roughly.

Very, very, verrrrry roughly...!

Ah, ok. But be warned ,one day, those gauges will be mine.........Evil laugh

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

We know for a fact and so do you, that not all Smartgauges out there are correctly calib.... ...oh forget it... :giggles:

We know that yours aren’t. Merlin were unaware of any, last time I asked. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Gareth E said:

I have a Trojan battery. At this time of the year I charge it with a genny through my Sterling battery charger, set at 14.8v. I'm now aware that in colder weather I should be charging at a higher voltage. I haven't fitted the temperature sensor supplied, it was too awkward to get it through the bulkhead to where the charger is.

Could someone suggest an ideal voltage for 10 degrees c?

Might an option be to dangle the temperature sensor out of a window whilst charging, let the charger do the calculations?

Also, if the charger does compensate for a lower temperature, am I right in thinking that the setting (14.8v) that shows on the box would change to the compensated figure, or does that go on in the background? 

The Trojan website or The Battery FAQ should cover charge voltages, from memory it's around 0.5V higher in very cold conditions.

Maybe check the SGs after a full charge and do some EQ charging if they're all over the place or dropping lower over time.

From memory the EQ voltage is 15.5V, again with around half a volt higher in very cold conditions.

For more detailed help maybe try the batt survey and start a new topic:

Yeah loads of questions and some will be redundant, but its 'question hell' or 'expert hell' I'm afraid. :unsure:

 

Edited by smileypete
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, WotEver said:

We know that yours aren’t. Merlin were unaware of any, last time I asked. 

 

Well the curious thing is, I bought mine several months apart, and BOTH are wrongly calibrated, by a country mile. Now I've either been fantastically incredlbly unlucky to buy to only two ever sent out faulty, OR, there are flippin' loads of them out there. Which is the more likely?

And given it took me quite a while to suspect the much-adulated-on-here Smartgauge might be overstating my SoC, and I'm very interested in such stuff, how many other owners of incorrectly calibrated SG owners might be out there who haven't realised? Hundreds would be my guess.

Given that you say Merlin are unaware of any incorrectly calibrated, I'd say they just aren't listening. After all you've told Gibbo about mine you said, and he has no doubt mentioned this to Merlin. Gibbo's avatar of a face with fingers in ears implying "I'm not listening" seems apposite.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

After all you've told Gibbo about mine...

Yup, and he told Merlin. And Merlin said “We’ve had none returned so can’t comment”. 

AFAIK that remains the situation. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, Richard10002 said:

I'd guess the type of person who buys a Smartgauge is not the type of person who would know much about calibration and signs that it might be necessary.

Alternatively perhaps there aren’t the hundreds out of calibration that Mike would have us believe. 

The simple answer is that we don’t know either way. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, WotEver said:

Yup, and he told Merlin. And Merlin said “We’ve had none returned so can’t comment”. 

AFAIK that remains the situation. 

 

 

Pressing the point, even this is not true. 

I was not the first poster on here to discover their Smartgauge was out of calibration. In fact I only thought to check mine as a result of a thread on here where someone else found theirs was wrong, and they did send theirs back to Merlin. (I think it might have been Chubby when he first rocked up on this site.)

ISTR a small number of other examples arising on here around that time too.

 

I certainly wasn't the first and only one with a dodgy SG.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You may be recalling Tommy Leyland up in Manchester. He had one that was reported to be way out. This is the time frame that you’re talking about. A month later and Merlin still hadn’t received it from him.

I never heard any follow-up on that as to whether he ever did return it or not and what Merlin did or didn’t do. 

So it IS true that at that time no-one had returned any. Maybe Tommy returned his, maybe he didnt. You haven’t returned yours. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, WotEver said:

You may be recalling Tommy Leyland up in Manchester. He had one that was reported to be way out. This is the time frame that you’re talking about. A month later and Merlin still hadn’t received it from him.

I never heard any follow-up on that as to whether he ever did return it or not and what Merlin did or didn’t do. 

So it IS true that at that time no-one had returned any. Maybe Tommy returned his, maybe he didnt. You haven’t returned yours. 

 

Yes that sounds a familiar name. So that makes three faulty SGs. And I think Richard10002 has one too. And other examples emerged back at the time too, so perhaps a total of six? Just from members of this site who have had the wit to test theirs. So there probably IS quite a large base of faulty gauges out there in general.

Many years ago I fitted a big semi-commercial sectional boiler in a basement. Following morning customer called to say the basement was a foot deep in water and we had better come back and sort it out. Terrified I'd done something stupid the boss and I pumped out the cellar and inspected the boiler. One of the (brand new) cast iron sections had a hole throught the cast iron you could poke a screwdriver through. Clearly a faulty casting so we called Potterton out. So we sent the section back to Potterton under guarantee. Potterton wrote a letter back stating there was nothing wrong with it, and there would return it to us having rejected the guarantee claim. Boss was furious because what came back was a completely different casting, complete with no hole! Manufacturers generally deny any problem with their products just as Merlin are doing. It's to be expected and is the way of business.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Merlin definitely know about my Smartgauge that was 0.5v out as they agreed I could return it direct to them not back to cactus navigation where I bought it from. They also denied knowledge of any others that were out but replaced mine with a brand new one (that was correctly calibrated).

Mine was returned in spring, and I only thought to check it after reading of problems on here. 

Tom 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For what it is worth I have a cheapo chinese voltmeter, a Victron BVM 700 The MT50 solar monitor and a Smartgauge . BVM and Smartgauge are always within 0.01 volts ie rounding error, the chinese meter is usually 0.2v higher but is temperature sensative, 0.3 higher in hot weather, 0.1 when it is to cold to be boating. The Solar voltage reading bears some resemblance to the others, but can be 0.4 volts out either way, compared to the BVM and Smartgauge.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, Detling said:

For what it is worth I have a cheapo chinese voltmeter, a Victron BVM 700 The MT50 solar monitor and a Smartgauge . BVM and Smartgauge are always within 0.01 volts ie rounding error, the chinese meter is usually 0.2v higher but is temperature sensative, 0.3 higher in hot weather, 0.1 when it is to cold to be boating. The Solar voltage reading bears some resemblance to the others, but can be 0.4 volts out either way, compared to the BVM and Smartgauge.

Well, that’s as it should be of course. 

4 hours ago, Tom and Bex said:

... replaced mine with a brand new one (that was correctly calibrated).

One hopes that they didn’t have to specifically check that it was correctly calibrated but simply knew that it would be. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Tom and Bex said:

Merlin definitely know about my Smartgauge that was 0.5v out as they agreed I could return it direct to them not back to cactus navigation where I bought it from. They also denied knowledge of any others that were out but replaced mine with a brand new one (that was correctly calibrated).

Mine was returned in spring, and I only thought to check it after reading of problems on here. 

Tom 

 

Thanks Tom.

So we now know of five faulty smartgauges on here so far, out of a user base of probably about 40. 

MtB
MtB
Tommy Leyland
Tom and Bex
Rusty69

Any more for the list?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

31 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

Thanks Tom.

So we now know of five faulty smartgauges on here so far, out of a user base of probably about 40. 

MtB
MtB
Tommy Leyland
Tom and Bex
Rusty69

Any more for the list?

Well Merlin Equipment are now on CWDF, so perhaps you will get an answer

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, rusty69 said:

Well Merlin Equipment are now on CWDF, so perhaps you will get an answer

 

Well feck moi!

Given they told WotEver they've never had any sent back (see posts 202 and 205), I wonder if they will deny getting the faulty one back from Tom and Bex. And I wonder what Tom might have to say about that.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

Well feck moi!

Given they told WotEver they've never had any sent back (see posts 202 and 205), I wonder if they will deny getting the faulty one back from Tom and Bex. And I wonder what Tom might have to say about that.

 

Well, I guess if they initially take time to read all the smartgauge related posts it might be a while before they make their first post. I predict 2021, but may be 10% out:)

  • Greenie 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

As suggested - here we are Gents & Ladies! If anyone thinks they have an issue with a SmartGauge it's important to us. I am sorry it has taken us so long to catch up. The SmartGauge is an absolutely fantastic product so we clearly need to address your concerns. If anyone has a unit that they believe has this problem then please call us to arrange its return. If we conclude there is a problem then we will replace it immediately free of charge. I will say that we have conducted reviews on a couple of the small number of units returned to us and found there to be no issue however we also don't doubt the experience of many customers on this forum. You know your electrics far better than us. In addition to replacing any units found to be faulty, we will also offer an "at cost" upgrade to our DataCell I or DataCell II battery monitors if you are interested. The DataCell I will monitor multiple battery banks for voltage and SoC. The DataCell II will also monitor SoH (State of Health) as well as other parameters too... (Blame Gibbo - he's still at it!)... 01202 697979

Edited by Merlin Equipment Ltd
  • Greenie 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Great post, Merlin. 

Thanks for stepping up :)

9 minutes ago, rusty69 said:

Well, I guess if they initially take time to read all the smartgauge related posts it might be a while before they make their first post. I predict 2021, but may be 10% out:)

4 years out :P

  • Greenie 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, Merlin Equipment Ltd said:

As suggested - here we are Gents! If anyone thinks they have an issue with a SmartGauge it's important to us. I am sorry it has taken us so long to catch up. The SmartGauge is an absolutely fantastic product so we clearly need to address your concerns. If anyone has a unit that they believe has this problem then please call us to arrange its return. If we conclude there is a problem then we will replace it immediately free of charge. I will say that we have conducted reviews on a couple of the small number of units returned to us and found there to be no issue however we also don't doubt the experience of many customers on this forum. You know your electrics far better than us. In addition to replacing any units found to be faulty, we will also offer an "at cost" upgrade to our DataCell I or DataCell II battery monitors if you are interested. The DataCell I will monitor multiple battery banks for voltage and SoC. The DataCell II will also monitor SoH (State of Health) as well as other parameters too... (Blame Gibbo - he's still at it!)... 01202 697979

 

Welcome MEL.

Very kind of you to post this, thank you. I'll give it some thought. It's a PITA to pack up the Smartgauges and post them back though, as I have mentioned before.

 I'm very curious about the SoH parameter you mention. This was discussed only recently when someone was ramping the £50 battery testers, but no-one seemed to know what it means exactly. Could you explain please? many thanks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

Welcome MEL.

Very kind of you to post this, thank you. I'll give it some thought. It's a PITA to pack up the Smartgauges and post them back though, as I have mentioned before.

 I'm very curious about the SoH parameter you mention. This was discussed only recently when someone was ramping the £50 battery testers, but no-one seemed to know what it means exactly. Could you explain please? many thanks!

Send off one SG at a time ? no withdrawal Symptoms and no contradiction to stare at.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

Welcome MEL.

Very kind of you to post this, thank you. I'll give it some thought. It's a PITA to pack up the Smartgauges and post them back though, as I have mentioned before.

 I'm very curious about the SoH parameter you mention. This was discussed only recently when someone was ramping the £50 battery testers, but no-one seemed to know what it means exactly. Could you explain please? many thanks!

Hi Mike. SoH (State of Health) is an "on the fly" calculation of what the available energy is in your batteries when fully charged compared to the capacity published by the manufacturer when they are new. DataCell II continuously monitors this. When an SoH reading of 80% has been reached then that is when most battery manufacturers would recommend their batteries are effectively "end of life" and should be replaced. That is not to say they will not continue to work beyond this threshold however it's a good guide for when you should be thinking of budgeting for a new purchase!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.