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Update for any that are watching: Did a test yesterday after holding at 13.6-ish for a couple days. Instead of hitting OVP at 13.9, they're now at 14.2. Going to leave it balancing for another couple days (or more?), really hoping for a OVP of 14.4 or better.

Agreed, and since this user only occasionally gets shore power, it'll never be long term. The DC-DC and Solar charge controllers are a bit smarter and will drop their voltages a bit. I think these batteries are so bad that they're in OVP at 13.5-ish. When the inverter kicks in, the voltage...

The cells were top balanced before being assembled with a desktop charger. They're exceedingly crappy cells though and won't maintain balance through even a single cycle, so OVP kicks in way too early, all the time.

I guess I'm just surprised that a charging source would spike so high so quickly. Seeing 19v (even if just for an instant) is really not expected when the charger is supposed to be putting out 14.4 Agreed, in theory, but if your solar charge controller is always running unless you manually...

Agreed, I'm all about the Victron equipment for every application and system these days. The cheap stuff just isn't worth it.

It's only spiking right now if the inverter has some kind of draw. Otherwise the system seems to be sitting perfectly happen at 14.-something volts. To clarify, this inverter is very simple and doesn't have a shore power input concept. It's just a 12v DC to 120v AC inverter. There's a...

This makes sense when used with a charge controller, since it's designed to put power into a battery. My question here is, am I crazy thinking the inverter is sending it's excess 12v power back from the inverter to the batteries when it decides it doesn't need it? With regards to top-balancing...

Let's set up the situation: A charger is running (could be solar, DC-DC, or shore power) and is outputting 14.something volts (generally 14.2 or 14.4 depending on charger) All batteries are in over-voltage protection mode (because they're sucky grade B cells and no amount of top-balancing will...

I just figured these things were done ahead of time. In your opinion: How long should it take to balance the cells (via BMS) in a 100ah 12v pack? (And I'm working blind here because the the LiTime BMS doesn't have bluetooth, so I can't see what's going on.)

I don't have the equipment to do a capacity test, unfortunately. And I need this system for its intended purpose to NOT be in over-voltage condition at 14.4 volts as it has to be able to absorb some amount of power while at that voltage.

Yes, I was just providing a clarification to my original statement. And without Bluetooth on this particular battery I purchased, I have no way of knowing what the voltage spread is, so I'm blindly trying to top-balance for who-knows-how-long.

Yep, I know. I'm just being impatient with this battery because I was expecting it to be fully functional when I bought it instead of needing babysitting and an extended install process.

Without the bluetooth BMS, I'm guessing at what the voltage is where it'll start balancing. And is that single-cell voltage, or minimum cell voltage? No way to know since it's a sealed black box. So in your opinion -- how long do you think it'll take to balance out one or more cells in a 12v...

Agreed -- The 48v batteries I've built myself have bluetooth BMS's, and I can check and see what's going on. The 12v batteries I've built lately have bluetooth BMS's. I was trying to just buy something off the shelf and have it work so I didn't have to build my own. That didn't work out so...

OK, that sounds pretty much like what I'm doing right now with my desktop charger. I can set it to exactly whatever voltage I want and tinker as needed. And I've already been doing the "fun part", trying to figure out how high I can set the voltage without having it trip into over-voltage...

Should I ever need to buy 12v shore power chargers, that one (or the other similar Victron models at slightly higher amperage) are at the top of my list. Meanwhile, for the system that this is intended to go into, I have a Victron 12/3000 inverter, which handles charging already, so I don't...

I've applied small loads, but have not done a full discharge. I'm not set up with a lot of test or extra equipment, so I don't have an easy way to completely discharge a single 12v battery. Right now I'm in the middle of doing a very slow charge at a controlled voltage to try to get the cells...

Meaning you don't have to spend potentially weeks trying to top-balance a battery that is in a sealed case. That's what I'm working on right now and it's frustrating.

If charging is all they needed, then I'd agree. The issue I'm having is when a battery hits over-voltage protection at 13.8 volts. Then when an inverter has a large load, pulls some power, then sends it back, the whole systems spikes over-voltage because there's nowhere to put the power, and...

BattleBorns do something that no other company does, as far as I can tell. They capacity match and top-balance their cells before putting them into batteries. This means when you get one of their batteries, it's ready to go. You don't have the over-voltage cutoff issues that myself and others...

Thank you, that's a very clear description of what's likely going on. I'll try your idea next about setting it at 14.0 volts and leaving it for a day to see what it does. I just completed another experiment: Pulled the battery out of the box. Was sitting at 12.7 volts (even though it's fully...

Are there any battery brands (besides Battleborn) that match capacity and pre-balance the cells before they ship out the batteries? I'm looking for a quality battery and Li-Time and SOK appear to not do this. At this point, I'm looking for a simple 12v, 100ah battery, with low-temp protection.

I read through that post and it appears that I need to cycle the battery many dozens of time before maybe it'll start working correctly. And I need to somehow guess the exact charging voltage and amperage to get the internal BMS to actually balance the one or more high cells. I guess my...

The 30-amp charger is just a dumb converter that puts out 14.4 volts. The 10-amp charger is a desktop power supply that lets me adjust voltage and amperage.

Wow, even the SOK's aren't set up with balanced cells to begin with. I have little faith that these Li-Time batteries will ever balance. They also don't have the bluetooth BMS to monitor what's actually going on, so I'm just guessing.

The only other charger I had handy was only capable of 10 amps. I put that charger on it and it wouldn't go higher than 13.8, no matter how long I left the charger on it. With other lithium batteries, (and all batteries, really), the charge rate would slowly drop as the battery approached full...

I purchased two Li-Time 100ah "Trolling Motor" batteries. I noticed when charging them with a regular AC to DC shore power charger that they'd be putting in power at around 30 amps until they got to 13.9 volts. Then the amperage would instantly drop to zero and the voltage would read 14.4 (the...

I've seen this same behavior on a new Li-Time 100ah battery. Got it fully charged (which is another story), then it appeared to go into over-voltage protection mode. At that point, the voltage dropped to 12.8 or 12.9. I finally got it to "wake up" by attaching a 12v socket and plugging in a...

I checked my email this morning and found that I was refunded an additional $299.80. This brings my total refunded amount up to $1,238.85.

Sorry, no, that wasn't mentioned in the original post. The timing was instantaneous, at least as far as I could tell. Far shorter than 1 second. As soon as we hit the vacuum switch, the battery instantly cut out, throwing the Short Circuit fault code. Richard, I hope you have your...

I've been working with various kinds of mobile RV solar systems since about 2017. Started with some AGM batteries back in the day, quickly figured out I should move to lithium. Built my first "real" system in 2018 with 200ah of LiFePO4 (DIY) and Outback components (inverter, solar charge...

Sure, a sales guy will always spend a bunch of time with you to get you to buy things. It's the after-sale customer service that I'm having issues with.

They never actually detailed how they came up with the figures they used. My purchase price was $1,499 + $182.12 (shipping) = $1,688.12 total. They chose to NOT refund me 100% of the purchase price because they couldn't reproduce the issue. So let's assume a 100% refund would have been...

Thanks for the suggestion, and I'm sure I could modify my used vacuum to work with this delicate LV 6548 and Server-Rack 48v battery bank, but it seems like it makes more sense to just use the Jackery, since it could run it fine. Sorry, I don't mean to be dismissive about your suggestion, I'm...

I've never even heard of a EMI filter. Oh, I'm just now remembering -- we also hooked that same vacuum up to my rig, running an Outback inverter (3600 watts) and my DIY LiFePO4 48v battery bank (with an Overkill Solar BMS), and it had no troubles. That setup (which was much more expensive than...