Frustrated, confused, and dissappointed

[SoSound]

Battery chargers...
This was supposed to be a followup to provide updates on a good customer service experience and the successful replacement of my battery charger which suddenly stopped functioning back in July. I replaced the ProCharge-Lite that I had with a ProCharge Ultra 30 amp charger. It was a direct swap out from the Lite to the 30A, connected to a two battery house bank and a single start battery. The only hiccup that I had was a high voltage alarm when I first started up the new charger back in August. After reviewing the preset battery charging profiles, I made sure that the Sealed Lead Acid profile was selected to remain below my VDO electric panel's alarm threshold at 14.75v, and everything has worked fine for the last month plus...

All I did today was to install the bonded ground wire that I had neglected originally. I didn't want to neglect it, the wire was chasing itself all over the east coast as part of an online on order from a retailer who shall remain unnamed... Today, after installing the newly arrived ground wire, and switching back on all of the AC and DC breakers and switches that had been off, I get BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! High voltage alarms.

I have checked that the status lights indicate that the proper charging profile is active. But I am not seeing the expected 14.4v charge that I am expecting to see, on either the electrical panel or on the charger itself, they both show about 14.7v.

One thing that I did not do today (but will tomorrow) is to do a "FACTORY RESET", which the documentation says will just reset the charging profile to what is already indicated as the active profile.

Nine second charger video when activated including active profile indicator, yet no "Output" on 0-100% scale;

Active charging profile in Battery Selection mode, displaying High Charge and Float Charge voltage values for what should be both the actively selected profile and the default profile;

 

[garymalmgren]

What is a "bonded ground wire"?

gary

 

[dlochner]

What is a "bonded ground wire"?

gary

On this charger it is a chassis ground. Incase something shorts to the charger's metal chassis it is grounded.

There are 2 shortcomings to the Sterling/ProNautic line. First the remote panel is only a remote display, not a remote control panel. And second it is real easy to accidentally change the charge profile. My first inclination is while installing the new wire you accidentally changed the charge profile. Try changing it back to the one you want.

What kind of batteries do you have? 14.7 is a little low for flooded batteries and seems a little high for AGMs.

 

[Maine Sail]

Temp sensor is likely doing what it should if the batteries are below 80F

 

[Blitz]

Yes, the remote does not allow you to do all functions such as setup, but it does allow easy access to a lot of information (including battery temperature) as well as the ability to change charger to float or equalization mode. Once the charger is set up for your battery type/charging profile there really isn't much else you need to do. I found that the custom profile for your battery is most convenient.

 

[SoSound]

Thanks for the reply @Maine Sail, hope you are doing well! It’s nice to have you still involved in the activity around here! The batteries should definitely be below 80F, the water temp around here is about 60 degrees and drinks stored below floor boards are kept cool . The batteries are located under the engine compartment steps, but the engine has not been run in several days.

The batteries are NAPA/East Penn group 31. The start battery is a wet non-sealed Interstate group 27.

Part of my confusion comes from the discrepancy between the profile setting and what is shown on the display. The profile setting specifies that the high charge voltage shouldn’t even be 14.7v, it should be 14.4v…. add to that a high voltage alarm that doesn’t appear to be configurable at 14.75v and you can see my frustration over .05 volts. I’m going to do a factory reset of the charger to see if what it really does is to clear the setting from memory to allow it to use the chosen profile and charging voltage when the charger starts up.

[Edit: Corrected “half a volt” to .05v… half of a tenth of a volt.]

 

[SoSound]

Well, the short term solution was pretty simple, I unplugged the temperature sensor and the charging voltage returned to what was listed in the selected charging profile. I will check with support in the morning to see if they have any info as to whether there is an upper limit to charging voltage with the temperature sensor in use. @jssailem reminded me that @Maine Sail has a caution in his piece on installing battery chargers about unattended charging for long periods of time with the temperature sensor connected in colder climates.

I will follow up on what I find from ProCharge support and what I end up doing to keep my alarm quiet in the longer term, while still making the best use of all of the features of their charger that I have available.

 

[SycloneDriver]

Well, the short term solution was pretty simple, I unplugged the temperature sensor and the charging voltage returned to what was listed in the selected charging profile. I will check with support in the morning to see if they have any info as to whether there is an upper limit to charging voltage with the temperature sensor in use. @jssailem reminded me that @Maine Sail has a caution in his piece on installing battery chargers about unattended charging for long periods of time with the temperature sensor connected in colder climates.

I will follow up on what I find from ProCharge support and what I end up doing to keep my alarm quiet in the longer term, while still making the best use of all of the features of their charger that I have available.

On my Beneteau I just disable the high voltage alarm at the panel. I really didn't see any other options, other than living with the noise. Thanks for reminding me about the missing ground/bond wire, I need to take care of that.