Good morning.

I have 2 of these HA2 battery balancer, connected them up about a week ago and the one bank of batteries have balanced beautifully the other bank seems to have a voltage difference between the center and outer batteries.

Can these things be repaired? I think that the one is not working.

I looked at the drawings and it shows 1 unit connected to 8 batteries 4 in series and the other 4 in parallel will this be possible if I run parallel cables on each battery currently only my 2 outer batteries are connected in parallel. IOW 2 banks of 4 Batteries but only the positive of the first battery and the negative of the last battery of each string is connected.

 

Thanks for all the cleverness

 

 

There was some recent discussion about this in the last week or so, and I think @DeepBass9 is trialing a solution.

What is your battery bank configuration? 2 strings of 4 x 12V?

What I have noticed is that if the balancers are working hard they emit a high pitched whine (like when you first connect to an out of balance bank). Out of balance with no whine may be that the balancer is broken.

Edited January 22, 20197 yr by DeepBass9

I've found that DC clip-on ammeter is fast becoming indispensable tool when messing with solar.

A quick clip round the HA2 leads and you'd probably have your answer as to whether it was working or not.

Hi there. Yes my bank is 2 strings of 4x12v 

I did not here any wining, not from one of them. The one bank is within 0.05v on all the other batteries but the second bank the 1st and last battery is about 0.5 v different from the 2 middle batteries. 

I had a look on the net and it seems that these are buck/boost circuits that equalize the voltage. 

Phil i agree i will need to purchase a proper dc clamp meter. 

I suppose you could swap the balancers from one string to the other and see what happens? When I had that battery configuration I used one balancer with links between the strings.

The bad new of course could be that one of the batteries is on its way out and the balancer is not able to compensate. (Also your hearing is shot in the higher registers to add insult to injury! (joke))

1 minute ago, DeepBass9 said:

Also your hearing is shot in the higher registers

Mine too, I never heard a thing either.

I'd swap them over too, and see what happens.

Great will swap them this afternoon and then check them over the next couple of days. 

 

While mentioning buying a dc clip-on, it reminds me bring something up.

Get one that can be zero'd. Otherwise be aware there can be an offset in the reading.

This can lead you a merry song and dance because the offset is DC.

And the offset adds to the reading in one orientation and subtracts from it when the meter is the other way round.

So effectively, turning the meter around gives to a reading that is different by twice the offset error.

9 minutes ago, DeepBass9 said:

I suppose you could swap the balancers from one string to the other and see what happens? When I had that battery configuration I used one balancer with links between the strings.

The bad new of course could be that one of the batteries is on its way out and the balancer is not able to compensate. (Also your hearing is shot in the higher registers to add insult to injury! (joke))

Hi there @Deepbass did you just use thin links or did you link them with proper 16mm2 cable between the batteries. 

I am planning to do this but the price of cable is expensive. I want to move to 32mm2 cable but at R65/m and i need 10m red and 10m black it is going to cost me R1300 for the cable without lugs. 

I considered those links and I concluded there was more chance that a dud cell would take more healthy cells with it.

My reasoning is written in a recent post somewhere on this forum.

I used thin cables with 5A fuses on them.  

Like this : 

 

 

Edited January 22, 20197 yr by DeepBass9

4 hours ago, Krokkedil said:

I have 2 of these HA2 battery balancer, connected them up about a week ago and the one bank of batteries have balanced beautifully the other bank seems to have a voltage difference between the center and outer batteries.

Check the temperature of the 2 HA2's. Mine are getting slightly warm to the touch when they are balancing. If one of them stays cold and the batteries are unbalanced it is probably broken.

Hi there. I measured the voltages as I got home at 3.

Bank 1

Battery 1 13.26v Battery 2 13.27v Battery 3 13.27V battery 4 13.26v

Bank 2

Battery 1 13.26v Battery 2 13.26v Battery 3 13.27v Battery 4 13.27v

Both balancers are a bit warmer than ambient. It seems that it took a couple of days to balance the banks. I installed them on the 13th and last week i still had an uneven voltage on the one bank but today they are reading very close to each other. 

Interesting little things. the chinese are clever. 

good day

How can i contact Chris to get the ha-02 .i have 2 banks of 48V. 

10 minutes ago, wehanvdw said:

good day

How can i contact Chris to get the ha-02 .i have 2 banks of 48V. 

[email protected]

Tanks Chris .

I need help on the DC board Breaker size's  in and layout if some one can post a diagram please

PV 

3 X4 270w Panels 3 in series 

Inverter

Mecer / RCT 5kva Pf1 inverter

Battery Banks X2  

each 200Ah 48V 

 

On 2019/01/22 at 12:11 PM, phil.g00 said:

While mentioning buying a dc clip-on, it reminds me bring something up.

Get one that can be zero'd. Otherwise be aware there can be an offset in the reading.

This can lead you a merry song and dance because the offset is DC.

And the offset adds to the reading in one orientation and subtracts from it when the meter is the other way round.

So effectively, turning the meter around gives to a reading that is different by twice the offset error.

I didn't know that. Interesting. It's like when you buy a spirit level. Put it on a surface and measure and then rotate the level 180 degrees and measure again. You should get the same reading even if the surface is not level. You will be surprised at how inaccurate some levels are.