question

Thijs Koerselman avatar image
Thijs Koerselman asked

Odd behavior; stuck at 13.4v but then sometimes back to 14.2v

I have a 100Ah LiFePO4 Smart accu that is 2 years old.

Last trip I noticed something odd. The battery when charging stayed at 13.4 for hours while the multiplus kept drawing 250W.

Because the battery never reached a close-to-full state, the multiplus continued to try to charge. After many hours of listening to fan noise, I decided to unplug.

A week or so later I noticed that the battery was charged again to the expected 14.2V and kept charging to 100% for the rest of the trip.

My camper builder has since checked everything and couldn't find anything wrong with settings or battery health.

Now a few weeks later, I plan go camping again, and notice the same thing. The battery is stuck at 13.4V when charging which is the equivalent to about 58%.

The only logical explanation I can come up with is that some of the cells are occasionally cutting out completely, due to a technical malfunction.

What should I do? Is there a warranty on the battery? Should I get it repaired or checked? I have already discussed the problem with my camper builder but they have never encountered this before.

battery chargingLithium Battery
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2 Answers
Matthias Lange - DE avatar image
Matthias Lange - DE answered ·

13.4V is definitely more than 58%.

The idle voltage of a LiFePO4 battery at 100% is around 13.3-13.4V.

If it is a Smart battery you can use VictronConnect to look "into" the battery.

What components are in the system?

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Thijs Koerselman avatar image
Thijs Koerselman answered ·

Hi Mattias, sorry it's not "smart" after all.

If the idle 100% voltage is 13.4V, then what is 14.2V? I assume with idle you mean no load?

My main problem is that my "charged voltage" setting is at 13.9V, and that is where it should be according to my builder. But because the battery doesn't reach it, the multiplus keeps drawing 250W and it's fan keeps being noisy.

So if I'm camping with electricity, I have to unplug every time to not go crazy and waste lots of power.

I will look up the other system parts later. I'm now about to go camping and I don't know where to find the details yet.

For now, I will share a screenshot of my settings and a photo of the actual battery:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=182lj0OmrwiPUpaNR7bWsNcxmoBBEMaJn&usp=drive_fs


https://drive.google.com/open?id=17wTQZ8WURyz2JOIQ8jkrDbNxrPGp6bwj&usp=drive_fs

https://drive.google.com/open?id=18DGQeWjR2G2OcWcFIhB7-PFAhChs3x4L&usp=drive_fs

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