How to test your batteries. AGM. Gel. Flooded. Part 1 House/Domestic The big batteries! We run through the test procedure and safety checks for house or domestic batteries as well as How they work and what to look for.

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Transcript:

laughs
[Laughter]
[Music]
[Music]
hello
I told you that battery sounded flat
[Music]
what's the first most frequent question
I get asked
how good are my batteries and how long
are they going to last in this video I'm
going to show you exactly what I do when
someone asks me to check their batteries
so this is Peter's catamaran
white cat
and we are going to do a full battery
test for him and the second most
frequent thing people say to me
I need lithium you need listen you need
lithium
lithium lithium lithium lithium whoa
hold it you don't need lithium
I would say 75 maybe 80 percent of the
people that I meet
don't need lithium they've got lead acid
batteries which are either lead acid
liquid or gel or agms and provided that
those batteries are connected the right
way and maintain
they're perfectly all right there are
some people in some circumstances where
lithium is a Better Boy
but not for everyone before I show you
how we do the testing and checks let's
look at some basic lead acid technology
remember if you know how it works you
know how to fix it lead acid batteries
fall into three basic categories the wet
cell where the acid is a liquid
gel batteries where the acid is a gel
an AGM absorbent glass mat where the
acid is contained within a glass mat
something similar to fiberglass that you
see on a boat
now remember that these are three
distinct different types A lot of people
get confused between gel and AGM they
are completely different types of
battery but remember these are all the
same class lead acid batteries
this is a typical lead acid wet cell
battery it has terminals lead plates an
electrolyte which is acid and liquid
acid some of you might remember this
little ditty poor little Johnny Brown he
will not live no more for what he
thought was H2O was
H2S04 so the sulfuric acid is not
concentrated but it is pretty dangerous
stuff not only can It Burn you and other
things but when charging and discharging
batteries give off gases and these gases
can be harmful
gel batteries use exactly the same basic
construction except for the acid is
contained within a gel which means it's
non-spillable
slightly less dangerous these batteries
are often sold as maintenance free or
sealed for life
AGM batteries use exactly the same
chemical technology their acid
apart from the acid is contained within
an absorbent glass mat hence agms and
again these are often sold as sealed for
life or maintenance free
it's important to remember that
batteries are actually a chemical
reaction
in this diagram connecting the two
electrodes and closing the circuit
causes a chemical reaction which results
in the lead sulfate being deposited onto
each of the electrode or plates
and water being released into the
electrolyte solution the reaction can be
broken down into three parts
the reaction at the anode the negative
plate the reaction at the cathode the
positive plate and the overall reaction
the overall reaction you generate
electricity
wet cells gel batteries and AGM
batteries all work in exactly the same
way it's just their electrolyte it's
suspended in a different way
now because the electrolyte is suspended
within the battery in a different way
gel AGM and wet cell or flooded
batteries have different characteristics
I'm not going to go into all that now
maybe that's something for another video
but they're all slightly different in
the way they react and this reaction can
be anticipated and calculated and that's
why different batteries have different
Duty Cycles and different charge rates
different densities in the plates can
give different characteristics such as a
start battery or domestic battery some
AGM batteries can do both equally well
before we uh do the test I thought it'd
run through a few things for you
the first thing is we have three
domestic batteries to test and then
being a catamaran we have two starter
batteries to test and we just testing
them for different things
um what I'll do just show you now some
of the equipment that we're going to be
using and then as we use it
um I'll go through its use and what it's
telling us so we have one of these this
is a drop tester
um you don't drop it and see how far it
is and basically tells you how many
um cranking amps a starter battery has
when it's under four load there's a big
resistor in there
um it's a bit old school it's the way we
used to do it years ago I still like to
do this because it's you know it's a
no-nonsense tester there's a big load on
there like your starter motor
um and it it sorts them the men from the
mice so that's why I like to use that
this is um a battery analyzer tester
this is a computer
um this does all the maths inside its
little brain that we used to have to do
with a
pirate pencil
and a book used to do all the maths work
out all the resistances etc etc
um with a pencil and a book I still
bring a pencil on book with Mido so this
is a laser thermometer just so that we
can check that the batteries are um
a good temperature to test around a bit
you want to be around about you know 20
25 degrees Max because that's what
they're
measured at when they come out the
factory at roughly 20 degrees
um and a good old-fashioned multimeter
this one's a clamp meter uh we can
measure amps uh in cables with that but
this one is calibrated and so I like to
keep that there as a test piece so that
I can check all the voltages and
resistances as well so against something
that's known
all right let's go and uh let's go and
start the test
oh here I am uh
down on the port side
aft cabin
in the battery box and the battery box
here is so big underneath this uh huge
double bed that I can actually get in
the box now you can't see an awful lot
from there I can see a lot more so what
I'm going to do is I'll talk you through
it and then when we get to bits where we
need some detail I'll show you on the
GoPro and we'll we'll cut to those bits
so the first thing
that I've done and I did this off camera
was I numbered all of the batteries so
there are three 230 amp hour agms in
here
and I have numbered them with my little
letter set I'll show you a picture of
that
here's the numbering that I put on
battery One battery two battery three so
that's they're numbered we can identify
each battery now and that's pretty
important we need we need to know which
battery is which because the values and
that we're going to be measuring are
going to differ on each battery
the next thing that we are going to need
to do is to just check that the battery
terminals as they are at this moment are
all tight which they are and also that
they've got some anti-corrosion agent on
them
um
so these have they're quite goopy
whoever did the install it looks like
they've done a pretty good job
um the batteries are all strapped down
I'll show you those straps in a moment
um but one thing which is immediately
obvious
is that all of these batteries have been
set up
um in parallel
now they've been set up in parallel
which is fine but it's the why in which
they've been set up let me show you how
that works
this is the way that White Cat's
batteries for the domestic system have
been wired
there are three 230 amp hour batteries
at 12 volts
all
690 amp hours approximately this equates
to
8625 Watt hours and remember we measure
battery banks in what hours
when we put Power into these batteries
I.E charge them
or when we take power out I.E discharge
them
notice the first battery in line is
battery number three
that is going to be taking most of the
significant load on discharge and of
course when it's charging it's going to
be the first one charged up
the reason for that is that battery
number two and Battery number one have
cables that run from Battery number
three's Terminals and these cables have
an internal resistance therefore because
of the resistance they won't be getting
the same amount of voltage or amperage
when it's charging
or putting out the same amount of
amperage when discharging
in effect what happens is battery 3
provides at least 50 percent of the
discharge power available
battery number two will provide slightly
less and Battery number one even less
so battery number three is having a
pretty hard life there are better ways
to wire the batteries where this effect
can be lessened and all the batteries
provide the same amount of current
or the current draw can be spread over
the whole Bank more evenly
let's look at that
a quick way to do this
is to put the positive on one end of the
battery bank and the negative on the
other end this way the two outside
batteries are taking the majority of the
load on discharge and of course when the
batteries are charged up they're taking
the majority of the charge
the center battery is doing less work
this helps
but it's not ideal
in this diagram
all three batteries have cables of equal
length going to a bus bar a positive bus
bar and a negative bus bar keeping all
of the cables the same length means the
resistance in the cables is the same
all of the batteries will then take the
same amount of load on discharge and the
same amount of charge when being charged
ideally the optimum way to wire these
batteries would be to have two large bus
bars one positive and one negative
the two cables would then connect to the
ends of the buzz bars and go off to the
load or the charging circuits
all of the resistances are kept low
and they're all the same to every
battery this is the optimum way but
they're sold and wide like this in
reality on most boats
so I'll use my famous pirate pencil to
point things out to you
and you can see here
we have a positive going to a positive
going to a positive on three batteries
oh and here's the numbering that I put
on battery One battery two battery three
and you can see that these straps are
pretty tight but as well as the straps
down the sides of the battery on all
three sides
they have these little locking
tabs hold them in position so that
that's quite good
they are not going to slide around now
obviously on a cat
um
they the boat tends to be less inclined
it's not going to do
that
or
that what we have to do is to make sure
that the batteries can't slide left and
right four and aft
so left and right four and aft and make
sure in the case of
possible inversion that the batteries
would stay put so this the straps make
sure that that happens
and the little
blocks down the side as you can see
that one there make sure that they can't
slide so that's fine now there's a
couple of reasons for that one is these
batteries are about
180 kilos each so there's 2.2 pounds to
a kilo
work that out they're heavy if they
start flying around they're going to do
damage to things like the inverter here
this isolation diode
and a glorifier which is
down the back here
not only that but the battery would be
damaged you know if it hits something
hard like one of these surfaces then the
battery is going to be damaged
and split now in the case of a lead acid
battery that's got liquid inside you are
then going to get acid everywhere and
battery acid in your bone is not a good
thing
so with an AGM battery there's no liquid
as such inside it's glass mats that's
what the GM stands for in AGM
and therefore the if they were damaged
there's not going to be liquid acid
flowing everywhere they are virtually
um maintenance free because of that you
don't have to top the mat like you would
a lead acid battery conventional lead
acid battery
um
and generally you can charge agms much
faster than you can a traditional
um lead acid battery
they last a lot longer five to six
hundred Cycles is there is their
lifespan if not more
so that's five to six hundred times you
can discharge them and then recharge
them fully without them deteriorating
some will handle more than that some
will handle less obviously with lithium
you're in the 2000 to 5 000 Cycles range
so that's why lithium is is much better
A lot of people get confused between
agms and gels gel batteries have a
viscous liquid inside them it's more
what we'd call a paste or a gel there
are some quite fundamental differences
and the way that they are charged and
their longevity changes let me and now
we start testing but first we have to
disconnect all the batteries
start
with this battery here
13 mil spanner
that's half an inch or so
there we go
and you just notice on this one as well
there's a terminal
which has been left on there
and not taken off I think somebody's
had a battery cable on there for
something else
and it's broken off there's so there's
actually the terminal crimp on there
and these
have built infuses look
in there
I do like those good idea so that's that
one off
and then battery number two
thank you
take the positive off
and the third one here
let's release that
you can see the
engine start battery for the port engine
is in here
that's the one we'll be looking at next
so that's off
and up out the way
that's it and we're going to leave that
hose off
for a little while what we'll do
meanwhile is we'll just get our
equipment set up
um so that in an hour's time when these
have all settled down a bit we can uh we
can just check their voltage
okay we're back now after an hour or so
lovely cup of tea and a nice slice of
cake and I'm just going to measure the
voltage
um
of these batteries now they've been
sitting at rest and I'm using
[Music]
I'm using my multimeter this one is
calibrated it's been calibrated against
a known voltage and I do that
probably every three months or so not
really necessary but I do check it
um I've got a couple of those and this
is the the best one
um
or the better of the two I've got
so let's measure the voltage on there
make sure we've got a really good
contact
and that's 12 point
eight nine
and this one
12.94
and this one 13 point
13.0607
now you guys show you
yeah so
all slightly different voltages they're
they're not changing
let's say that's just so that we we know
that they're okay we haven't got any
that are down below
12.2 12.3 which would mean that the the
batteries are discharged so
the next thing we're going to do is
we're going to get out
our analyzer
and we connect
computer says alive so we check the
battery now they are
AGM
we're going to set the M powers
and
this battery is
toast
let's see if we can get this on the
camera
so this battery is recommended it's
replaced it's only got 24 percent
of its life left the state of charge is
a hundred percent SOC
um the internal resistance is
4.4
Mega ohms
so that's not good for that battery
Let's uh let's try the next one
once again
reset that battery enter AGM
and Powers
230
test
oh dear
so this one is
17 percent
well um what I'll do is I'll print these
out for you
um I can download the data on this from
um computer but I'll print them out
anyway and I'll show you the printouts
once we're done
in chronological order
so our first battery battery number one
state of charge was a hundred percent
battery voltage was good 12.86
state of health 25 that battery is
losing 75 of its capacity and they are
eight years old so that's kind of to be
expected
um it was measured at 560 amps
we selected GB input and it should be
rated at 1120 amp hours
it's an AGM battery and the internal
resistance was 4.4 Mega ohms
Theory number two hundred percent 12.89
um only 17 percent
465 amp hours the input was GB
rated at 1120 which sounds the other one
it's an AGM battery same as the other
one internal resistance was a 5.3 Mega
ohms
and finally
uh battery number three
hundred percent
12.96 when it was measured
thirty percent uh status of health so a
little bit better measured at 620 amps
um the input against GP rated at 12 uh
sorry 1120 sounds the other one AGM
sounds the other one uh internal
resistance
um
3.99 Mega ohms so you see the battery
with only 17 life left
has an internal resistance of 5.3 Mega
ohms and the one with 30 left
has
3.99 Mega ohms resistance
and of course the one and I'm battery
number one
is 25 and that's 4.4 Mega ohms so you
see how the internal resistance of the
batteries
um
is has a mathematical uh relationship
um with its
um capacity
and we've talked about battery
um
the internal resistance of batteries
before
and why lithium is so good because it
has a very very low
uh internal resistance a lot lower than
3.9 Mega ohms
so unfortunately I will write this up in
a little report for Peter and um
I will download the data
um
from the
battery analyzer there is no point in me
doing a
voltage
test for his charging circuits
because we know they're working the
batteries were charged were charged up
and it's kind of pointless doing it on
a set of batteries which are
basically toast there's probably I don't
know 200 amp hours or so of total
capacity which is okay
um you know he might get away with it
for another six months or so
um but they do tend to go once they get
down
low they go very very quickly and they
start to deform
uh shape wise
um all get hot
that's my multimeter turning off or they
get hot when you charge them so
um I I would suggest I'm gonna strongly
recommend to Peter that he replaces
these
this is the type of battery report which
I produce obviously there's three of
these one for each battery
I went on the next day to check the
starter batteries
in the next video I'll show you the two
other tests that we have to do and talk
you through how to test the starting
battery obviously nobody wants to get
stuck in the middle of the ocean and not
be able to start their engine
meanwhile if anyone wants any large
fishing weights I can give you Peter's
details and you can contact him
thanks for watching don't forget like
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