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tharbarn avatar image
tharbarn asked

Smart Battery high cell voltage during initial charge.

Hi guys,

Should I be concerned that the cells in my Smart Lithium 12.8 200ah seem to be way out during initial charge? I'm using a Multiplus 12-1600-70 compact. I have set the charge rate very low and dropped it now down to 5A. But after a couple of minutes two of the Cells go up over 3.75v while the other two stay under 3.5v. Once the battery has rested, they all go back to 3.35v.

It seems that the battery is ether very out of balance or faulty which is disappointing on a £2500 brand new battery.

Should I lower the charge down further or does it need replacing?

Lithium Battery
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2 Answers
Matthias Lange - DE avatar image
Matthias Lange - DE answered ·

This is a normal behavior for the very first charging.
https://www.victronenergy.com/blog/2020/07/06/victronconnect-v5-27-lithium-smart-v1-19/
You can try to lower the voltage to 13.8V for a few hours and slowly increase the voltage in 0.05 steps.

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jasontav avatar image jasontav commented ·

Can you confirm that balancing happens above 13.8V, or what the requirement for an 14V+ balancing voltage is?

That blog post (by @mvader (Victron Energy) ) seems to me to have conflicting information about 14.2V, 14V or 13.8V being the required balancing voltage.

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tharbarn avatar image
tharbarn answered ·


I've just read the Blog about the Smart Batteries, I spend about 6 hours yesterday trying to figure this out, worried I had done something wrong. Worried I had just spent £2500 on a faulty battery. I looked at every bit of info I could find, looking at the lastest Manual online and found nothing explaining that this is normal and a problem we all have to work through. WHY NOT UPDATE THE MANUAL online at least? Or better still why not balance the cells during manufacturing? I totally understand that these are complex products and you are constantly improving the firmware and operational information of these products, but better information would help a lot.

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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image mvader (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented ·

Hi you are totally right, we’re working hard on a better manual at the moment.

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tharbarn avatar image tharbarn mvader (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented ·

Thank you for your response.

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