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A swollen lead-acid battery in your photo voltaic battery financial institution could be a critical hazard to your system and to you. Swelling in a battery at all times signifies an issue—however what precisely is the issue? What’s inflicting your battery to swell? There’s most probably one cause for this. Maintain studying to study what that cause is, and how one can forestall this from occurring to your batteries.
The Offender: Overcharging
The commonest reason behind battery swelling is overcharging of the battery. When a battery is overcharged, the cell plates inside it develop an excessive amount of, placing strain on the battery case and resulting in swelling. If the swelling will get unhealthy sufficient, this may trigger the battery case to separate and crack.
Many individuals suppose that charging a lead-acid battery is like charging the battery in a cellphone—you simply plug it in, and when the battery is totally charged, it’ll cease charging, proper? That truly is true, however solely if you happen to’ve related the battery correctly and with the correct tools.
Now that you realize why your battery is swelling, it’s time to speak about learn how to forestall overcharging from occurring within the first place.
Stopping the Drawback
To stop overcharging, it’s a must to sort out the underlying drawback, and there are a number of of these. One frequent cause for overcharging is utilizing the improper charger. For instance, if in case you have a 24V charger and a 12V battery, this may provide an excessive amount of present to the battery and trigger overcharging and swelling.
Be sure you’re utilizing the correct sort of charger—not just one that gives the correct voltage, but additionally one that’s totally suitable and of top quality. The charger’s most charging capability must be decrease than the battery.
When connecting your battery to the charger, guarantee correct polarity within the connections. Reversed polarity may result in battery swelling. Ensure you defend the battery terminals to keep away from short-circuiting the battery and inflicting everlasting injury to it.
Victron Power’s Answer
Whereas overcharging can’t be utterly prevented, Victron Power has developed a 4-step adaptive cost curve that will increase battery life and reduces the percentages of overcharging and battery swelling. This curve helps to control the cost within the battery extra effectively, sustaining a cost for longer with out concern of overcharging. A lot of their fashionable merchandise, together with their AGM and gel batteries, are much less prone to expertise this challenge and the ensuing swelling and cracking of the battery case. When you’ve skilled swollen batteries up to now and wish to scale back your odds of experiencing it once more, spend money on a Victron Power battery and you’ll want to observe the charging suggestions above.