Victron Lead Acid Batteries - Failure ?

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Alexandros asked Nov 10, '22

Victron Lead Acid Batteries - Failure ?

All Victron batteries must have a manufacturing error after a lot of test and research on around 300 batteries from Victron mainly super cycle 25AH over 250 and 18 batteries Gel Deep Cycle 220Ah.

Most of the super cycle they fail within 6 months to 1 year even if you have them on float voltage and not cycling them, if cycling them on a solar system best you can get is 6 months. 30% got a catastrophic effect of swelling. Other manufacture of batteries with 4 year floating still there and running without a problem the only difference is that is 18Ah instead of 25Ah.

After 1year of using them new ones with serial numbers came out thinking they fixed the problem but at the end they all failed from 25Ah day one measured with a proper load tester they all end up at 3Ah the ones that are always on float voltage , the ones doing cycles are 100% dead. It was a big loss for us and there is no support or guaranty from our local dealer since they are not replying to our calls. They tried at the beginning to help but that didn't help since there is no response.

The 220Ah at a controlled environment at 25-30 degrees Celsius 70% state of charge as a discharge they get a half capacity if not less on some of them after 1 year.

After 1 year and 2 months it was failing cause of some of the cells in series of the 4 was actually close to 50Ah and some on 119Ah on 2 strings parallel of 4 in series.

All batteries show a good voltage like a new graph but with the difference of the capacity instead of 220Ah there new capacity 120Ah or 50Ah, on the small ones 25Ah when new but after 6 months to 1 year 3Ah if not swelling.

Note that internal resistance was measured but it can’t be trusted since it was showing good on a lot of cases but the capacity was not there, most test where done with C20 and C10 when new even C2 was good.

Hope this 2 year test and research on Victron batteries will help.

What is your experience with the Victron Lead Acid Batteries?

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kevgermany ♦♦ commented · Nov 10, 2022 at 04:01 AM

How much are you discharging these batteries? At what C rating,

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Alexandros kevgermany ♦♦ commented · Nov 10, 2022 at 06:52 AM

All super cycle 25Ah were on float voltage until a power failure which is like once if it happens and with a load of 1A which that makes it C25 (25 hours to discharge) and everything worked fine but after a period of 6 months to a year if a power failure happened they would last 3-4 hours so the batteries are replaced taken to the lab and fully charged and Load tested at a C20 rate or a C10 were you could see the real capacity and it was 3AH.

The Gel ones 220Ah were part of a system with solar which the temp was controlled with water chiller and insulation not to go above 30 and with a total load on the batteries when the sun was gone of 10A to 15A and Switch on the main grid after 30% of usage, that would make it remaining in the batteries like a 70% so the next day they would get fully charged and go into float voltage for several hours since we do have 270 days of the year sunny days usually. When the system gave a battery low voltage alert that was a year after and checked them to see for unbalanced cells under load and everything seemed ok so i load test them to see what i would get of them and so that something was wrong with the total capacity so they got removed went to the lab and load tested at a C20 rating where we saw the batteries where half capacity the 5 of them and 3 of them were 47Ah-57Ah , same system in another location same time running got the same issue with another 8 of them and 2 on a separate position are less than half capacity but let them their until they die since we can't get any support or claim a warranty since the Local Dealer that we reported the issues after 1 year and 2 months with remaining 10 months of warranty was not doing anything to report faulty product and on the last month of the warranty they decided to contact us to report this to victron after so many months when the Battery Monitor and the VRM system looses the History cause it has a 6 month history were gone and still no answer. With no direct contact with victron support the problems will dispute the quality of the brand since they are decent products but can't say the same for there batteries.

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